Is it almost Winter?

 “Is it almost winter?”,was the statement uttered mostly at our last Park Run. The week before it was chilly and rainy so much so that I broke away from the rest of the early setup volunteers because I had a bad case of the shivers. I took a few laps around the course just to warm up. This week we had sun and very little wind. The three days before however, we were treated to gusts into the 40’s and off and on torrential rain. I did manage to time an early run for a break in all that fun stuff to do a nice run of a bit more than nine miles. That is one thing that I love about this place, there are so many good places to run.

As for the park runs, we really do like the group of people who organize things and the participants are there to enjoy the event while working on their personal goals. We all laugh before, after and during the “race”. Susi and I have volunteered every week, helping to set up the course. We also have been the time keepers and Susi was the person whose responsibility was to encourage people who walk the course. That’s the perfect job for her because she can’t run the race since her knee replacement 18 months ago. So, it’s a win win situation for her. As for me, I like the course because it has a section that goes uphill and I have challenged myself to run up the hill (which we need to climb twice as we do two loops to make the 5K’s) without stopping. I managed to do that this past week. My other challenge is to do the course in under 30 minutes. I’m close to that goal. I did the last two runs in just a half minute over that goal.

Flynn’s life here has been a bit stagnant for the poor cat. For most of the time here we stayed in one 15’ by 12’ room which mostly was taken up by the bed and some furniture. Since we are the only tenants in the building, we were given permission to open up the other room on this floor for him to use as well. It is mostly empty except for a single bed and a wardrobe. He already knew it was there and constantly begged with a very pathetic meooooow to let him explore it. So, I let him check it out. If you know anything about cats, you can guess the rest of the story. He constantly wanted to get back in to check it out at all times of the day and night. Now we prop the door open and put some toys in it for him to play. At first that was good enough. He played by himself, but now it’s not as much fun as when daddy (me) plays with him. He begs, pesters and pleads until he gets his way. The thing is, I get tired of it before he does. I swear his mournful meow sounds like “Play with me daddy”’ Oh, and the week after we set the clocks back was torture as he stayed on standard and woke us up to play and feed him at 5:00. Thankfully, he is back on the correct schedule where I get up at 6:00 to groggily feed him breakfast. 

As far as the rental goes, it has predictably been moved to a later date. The landlord says it will be ready on the 18th, but I expect we will be moving in later than that. We’ll see.  We do have an appointment to go in tomorrow to take some measurements so we know how much we have room for furniture and a refrigerator. We also hope to find a reasonably priced washing machine. There are no laundromats here. Susi already went to Perth to look for stuff while I stayed home under the weather. We took turns nursing some kind of bug which I think was a result of our strange and sometimes stressful lifestyle. The symptoms were just an overwhelming dragging exhaustion, light headness and dizziness.  She had it for a couple of days before her trip to Perth. Whenever it happens, we will be happy as we need a real address that we are paying counsel taxes on to get our senior passes to ride all buses in Scotland free.

That’s all for now. Next time I will talk about Halloween, Guy Fawkes day and other interesting  discoveries we have made around here.