idiot....on a lovely day...

arctic valley ski lifts...below is a ground squirrel i believe. he was chatting with a buddy about 30 feet away. they are so cute.

this is one of my favorite hikes close to town. it's short, but has spectacular views. you do have to pay $5 bucks to park there. a total waste of my money today as you will read later. the view was nice though and it was great to walk someplace other than patterson road.

rio loves to stick her head out the window as i drive. so this is her doing just that heading back from the valley. it's a military road and often you will have troops out there. that was the case today. there are signs that say slow down to 10mph when troops are present. always thought it a funny sign, but today i had to slow down for troops. the skiing hill i believe used to be run by the military for thier people as was the golf course on the lower part of the road. i think volunteers now run the ski lifts. not sure. seems to change year to year. the golf course is always busy when i pass by. think it'd be fun to use the driving range. have never done that before...never played golf at all.

you can see the parking lot below. even though we quit about halfway up it's so short we were almost to the top. you can see over to eagle lake when you get there. i do love getting above the treeline though.

couple news stories that caught my attention..i know very random. probably related to the cough medicine i have taken recently. hycodan syrup is the best cough medicine there is! anyway. the iranian woman is not to be stoned. of course iran is now saying oh know, we weren't planning on stoning her. yeah, right. whatever, hopefully, countries that allow such barbaric acts will be forced to become more civilized. this is a huge benefit of the internet. it's hard to hide anything in this world. media can be a pain in the arse, but they do serve a purpose.

another local story was just emailed to me. the headline was something like wheelchair bound bunny taken by bear. can't remember. apparently, a bunny who is paralyzed and thus has a cart for his hindquarters was sunning himself in a yard in the muldoon area (quite close to me) when a black bear came and grabbed him up. i doubt this ended well for the rabbit, but the owner went chasing the bear in her stocking feet. the city added a reminder to keep close watch on your pets and also to keep trash and birdfeeders where bears can't get them. it didn't, however, remind people that it's a bad idea to chase after a bear.

my old dog huey liked to run up on bears. this put me in close proximity to more than one bear. one day i was hiking with friends, sharon and kobie, and huey took off after a black bear. now we'd seen some 6 bears on this trail that day. the trail was by a creek with salmon running. anyway, my friend sharon took off after huey who was chasing a bear. kobie and i were less inclined to run. luckily for huey most bears would prefer to not waste energy attacking annoying dogs or thier owners, and he came back unscathed.
but i do digress though i must add on that my boy huey tree'd one black bear on another day.

so i woke to a beautiful morning and didn't feel half bad. since i was going bonkers walking the dogs in just the neighborhood i thought i'd head to arctic valley. it's a rather short walk to a lovely view. rio didn't want to be left behind. i took my inhalers, some cough meds and off i went. we didn't get very far at all. rio started limping, i found breathing to be a bit rough and i became exceedingly hungry.

coughing this much is both exhausting and burns mega calories. i really haven't eaten big meals all week, mostly just snack and snack and snack. believe me, there has been no weight loss. i think i was up there for maybe a half hour. stupidly i'd brought no snacks. water, bear spray, camera, leashes, poop bags...you get the picture. i got shakey, dizzy, weak, was sweating and just felt woozey. i'm not diabetic, thank god though adult onset runs in the family. occasionally i do feel like my sugar is low. mostly, it's because i on occasion just forget to eat. i'm not anorexic or anything like that. my friends get mad as they claim eating is not something they ever just forget. i get hungry and then i just get sidetracked. my brain is like a crazed mosquito at times, zipping all over and not really able to zero in on the target. though, maybe that is a bad analogy as mosquito's seem quite able to zero in on me.

i remembered that i had this old packet of graham crackers that had been in my pocket when i left work one morning back in february or so. it's been sitting on my dash ever since. have no idea why it's been there, i'm lazy that way. actually bits of food in my car is another thing my friends find amusing. i generally can't finish a candy bar or bag of chips or whatever so invariably these snack items collect in the car. today all i had was that packet of crackers though. i tore into that packet as soon as i got to the car only to discover that it had absorbed whatever blows in from the engine onto the dash. it tasted horrible and i had to spit it out before i hurled. now i know how horrible the air must be in a car.
i returned home after stopping at mcdonalds and called out sick. obviously, i'm not of the strength yet to work. the employee health np had recommended i give it at least one more day off. mostly, i feel better, sound much worse and working nights can be a stressor when you are sick. i'll have to bite the bullet tomorrow and just carry loads of cough drops. i've worked sounding worse in the past. i'll try to swim tomorrow before work as that was the one thing that has really made me feel better these past few days. didn't make it today as i was just too tired after my arctic valley adventure. humans are stupid sometimes...today i was very human.

these other pictures are just flowers blooming in my front bed. they are a mess as is the lawn, but still they are pretty.

finished reading my third book on my kindle. being sick has been good for my reading. i tend to read in spurts. go through several books and then chill for a bit. this book was called, "cutting for stone". i really enjoyed reading it. love stories that keep you captivated. it's hard to sneak ahead with the kindle. i'm one who will sometimes get anxious and try to skip ahead to see what happens. the setting was in ethiopia mostly. they have non-physicians doing surgical repairs on women with fistulas. which i suppose isn't entirely impossible in countries of such unrest and poverty. i did many minor surgeries as a vet tech. sometimes it's probably easier to cut without fear when you don't know all the details. in many ways surgery is a technical skill. probably a specific thing could be taught easily to someone. anyway, being in medicine you tend to read those medical parts of a novel a bit closer.

in the villages up here they have started just teaching lay people to fill cavities and such. most villages have no dental support. i know the dental associations have been unhappy about this, but a need has existed for years in those remote places that hasn't been able to be filled any other way...so if that happens in the u.s.a well fistula surgery in a third world nation doesn't seem as far fetched i guess. anyway...good book.

old poem...okay...a thought first from '83

it seems the times i know myself the least are the times i thought i knew myself the most.

here is old poem from '83 as well

CHALKED MAN

a san francisco car, L.A. bound,

back seat rider now almost dead,

lovers head crushed by an iron rod,

the victorious male grasps the hand of his prize.

-

the sun sets fast, drops like a knife

that stabbed the light to death,

pain screams are killed by another blow,

they drive on to the asphalt graveyard.

-

murder town at last, murderer glares and smiles

a dark street in a suburb to life,

dead mans body is pushed to the street

waits, like others, for a dead mans destiny.

-

neighbors gather to watch

a murder tired cop approaches,

he makes a final scribble of a corpses life,

and chalks the outline of what was a man.

-

victim sprawled on death cold asphalt,

chalklines express his contorted state,

chopped mans blood freely seeped,

now gurgles by his invisible dead heap.

-----

so that is a bit brutal. i really only like the last stanza now. why would i write such a thing...? the memory is vague but when i was a kid a body was dumped within a block of our house. i remember the flashing lights from police cars and such that night and i remember riding my bike past the chalked imprint.

---

for todays pathetic attempt at poetry...

blue skies,

can't fix me,

only time,

it is easier,

to be ill,

when the clouds,

hide the hills.