This has been a week of emotional highs and lows. I've been very excited about the training technique I'm studying, but depressed because it's been too wet to actually try it out. I found out today that my bank had failed to autotransfer my mortgage payment with no explanation. That really pissed me off. Yesterday a bunch of stuff I'd ordered arrived, but a lot was backordered and several items were the wrong size. Frustrating.

I started at a new gym on Tuesday, and I'm really enjoying it. A friend of mine goes there, and it's been really nice to spend time with her while exercising. That's one of my favorite ways to spend time with friends, no matter what the exercise is. And this is close to home! Very convenient. I'm on a guest pass right now. I have to decide if I want to buy a membership, and if so which one.

It really bugs me when people hear an explanation for something and start using it without understanding it. Recently there was a discussion on one of my lists about whether or not peeing at night kept you warmer while camping. Some of us felt that having less mass to keep warm meant using less energy. Others trotted out an unsubstantiated explanation about there being no thermal gradient over your bladder (i.e. it's all at the same temperature), ignoring the rest of the body. No thermal gradient = no heat loss, therefore no energy used. It's obviously a bogus argument because it doesn't consider the whole body.

When I tried to discuss this more, the biggest proponent of the thermal gradient hypothesis said "it's a second order differential equation" like that meant something! I don't care if it's a quadratic or simple arithmetic, if the thinking behind it is wrong.

So the part that bugs me is where you point to an equation and think it solves all your problems simply because it's an equation. Like there's something special, something magical about equations. They're tools, not gospel.

That said, I'm still not convinced one way or the other. I just didn't like their argument.

What you call things in your life can have a big effect on how you and others perceive events. Broke and trying to save money? You're working on financial goals. Can't get a date? You've decided to be celibate. Frustrated by the time you spend correcting your pet's misbehavior? You're building a bond. It's all about perception.

I went to yoga tonight with Barbara. I rushed to get there because my boss held me up for half an hour as I was leaving work. I came home, stuffed a couple of slices of ham in my mouth, grabbed a tshirt, and left. We did cardio stuff for forty five minutes before class.

With no real dinner and plenty of exercise, my blood sugar crashed. That hasn't happened to me in quite a while. I had some fruit punch at the gym and a sandwich when I got home, but I'm still shaky. Barbara felt great. She can apparently go for days without eating. I'm envious. Also cranky, because as I was turning green and wobbling around, she felt fine. I'm trying not to hurl, and she's talking about going out after gym. Ha! I'm lucky I made it home without crashing the car. Going out for coffee was right out.

Oh well. Some days are good days, and some days are bad. With luck tomorrow will be a good day. If it's sunny I'm going to go spend some time working on Pluto's attitude. Maybe tomorrow I'll even have the energy to take the pooch for a walk. She's lobbying hard tonight.

Last night I was at Alex and Hana's for their annual sumptious Easter feast and egg hunt. It was fun. But today.. today was perfect.

I slept in as late as I wanted, then lazed about the house in my comfy jammies. Around noon I got dressed and put together a daypack of stuff, then drove up to Bethesda to get Emilie. It was in the forties and raining lightly.

We headed out to the Old Angler's Inn, parked the car, and did a couple of loops of the Billy Goat Trail. About six miles altogether of combined towpath walking and hiking on the trail. With the lack of sun and the mist in the air, everything that was green practically glowed. There were a couple of blue herons looking majestic in the canal, and on the river a wide variety of birds played or posed.

We spent three hours chatting, walking, and scrambling over rocks. I still felt energized when we finished. Both of us had a craving for french onion soup, so we headed to the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bethesda, where we made a meal of appetizers. Soup, huge soft pretzels, mixed veggies, a tortilla/cheese/tomato thing which was great, and the BEST dessert. They called it a strudel, but it wasn't like any strudel I'd ever had. It looked like a pastry stromboli. Thin and just crisp enough pastry dough was wrapped around more apples and nuts than you could shake a stick at. There were raisins and currants according to the description, but I didn't see them. And there was caramel sauce and ice cream.

So I was pretty happy, gastronomically speaking. I'm sure we negated the value of the hike just with that one meal, but at least we had a good time.

And I mean that literally. Every time I'm around them I get sick. There were kids at the party this weekend, and this morning I woke up with a sore throat and a cough. I want to curl up in my bed and have my mom pat my brow.

However, my mom lives in Arizona, she's not that good with sick people anyway, and I have to work. So instead I'm coughing on my keyboard and being bitchy to my coworkers.

I found my AC unit half off its concrete pad today. I assume the fittings have been damaged and it may need to be recharged. It had to have been hit by the lawnmower. I feel bad, but I think I'm going to stop having my neighbor mow. This isn't the first time he's rammed something. And this might be an expensive fix. So now I either need to find a lawn service or buy a mower.

Which is to say it's tending toward entropy. My favorite pants (elevated to that position from second favorite when my favorite jeans died) have developed small holes in the butt, and one of the seams just separated. My pants are dying the heat death of the universe.

Warm weather can't come fast enough. I think I have shorts with no holes in them somewhere, but it really needs to be in the seventies out for me to wear them.

One might think that I need to go shopping, and one might be right. But I just went shopping for business clothes last fall. And I hate shopping. I just can't bear the thought of going again to buy casual clothes.

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I went out to the farm this afternoon. It was the first time in over a week. It's been rainy out. The roundpen is kinda murky, so I *still* can't use it to train Pluto. So I started chasing him around the field. It's better than nothing.

Right, now I remember what the thing I didn't like about spring was. Allergies. I was untroubled the first few weeks, but whatever I'm allergic to is blooming now. At first I thought it might be a cold, but I'm not wiped out like I would be with a cold. I am a vessel for snot though.

I have some yardwork to do, but I did some yesterday and my back is unhappy so I'm taking a day off from that. Tomorrow after work, hopefully, I'll put down some humus and some grass seed. There's a hole that needs filling in my yard. Serendipitously, they had yard patching materials at the Giant yesterday. I bought some. I'm good to go. Must remember to hook up the hose so I can water my fragile new grass after I seed.

It's not quite spring cleaning, but I'm doing laundry and etc this morning. Paige woke me up at 7:15, and I actually stayed awake. I'm doing sheets and towels too so this weekend we have Very Serious Laundry. When the last load goes in I'm going to head out to the farm. The round pen had better be dry, because I am raring to go on the Pluto training. The little bit I did in the field with him Thursday hinted that it might be very satisfying.

Last night I went over to Barbara's to watch movies. That woman is a bad influence on me. No sooner did I make a resolution to cut back on my drinking than she offered me wine and I accepted. Bad me! I'm doing penance in the form of a hangover.

It's a gorgeous day out. Sunny, 70's, slight breeze. Pretty much perfect for anything. I went to the farm and held both horses so the farrier could trim their feet. Pluto struck out with his left front, but otherwise we had no theatrics. It was about as much as I could ask from him at this point. I still had things to do so after a brief grooming of Playboy I took off. Tomorrow I'll go back and take Pluto to the round pen for more work.

This evening is Taste of College Park. If Buddy has time and my back cooperates, we're going to head over there to hear Continuous Play. Then I'm going to bed early, because I'm old and I like to sleep.

It's one of those nights when the wind caresses your skin like the finest of wines, when you could walk forever if you wanted. There's a delicate scent of lilacs in the air.

I walked Paige and then sat out on my deck with a beer and soaked it in. Eventually the pooch insisted on dinner, but really it's a very fine night.

I napped today from 10:30 to 3. Now that's a nap. I proudly say that I got nothing done today. Except a little bit of dc.sage website administration in preparation for switching to the new machine. But I didn't have to move out of my chair for that.

I planned to go see Pluto today.. oh well.