run on sentences

"What have you been doing now that you are retired?"  This is the second most common question I get asked by people.   The first question is usually "Why did you leave a job you have had for 35 years? Aren't you too young"? I feel guilty that I can't say things like "well I am volunteering every day and am going to go on a medical mission to Chile next week" or "I have started that trashy novel I have always wanted to write" or "I have cleaned my entire house, started cooking gourmet dinners and remodeled the basement" or "I have started my own hospice business" or "I have found a way to achieve world peace".   However, there hasn't been any daytime TV and I feel good about that. This is what I have been doing.  I run any time I want but mostly in the mornings.   It is wonderful to be able to take my time afterward and sit around, read the paper and drink more coffee.  Sometimes I treat myself to a ho...

Last weekend Kseniya and I did the Austin 1/2 marathon.  It has become a yearly tradition, that CAJ, Kseniya and I make the weekend trip to Austin in February.  Running the 1/2 marathon just gives us a reason to go there - as if we need one.  And it my goal to keep my once perfect ass from descending onto my hamstrings during the gloomy January that Utah is known for.  Funny that a person can even run in Utah in the horrible inversion we have here - especially a person with asthma.  Anyway, that weekend in Austin seems to be like a protective bubble that keeps the rest of the world and it's troubles away from us for a few days. It was 75 degrees during the run, which started at 07 on Sunday morning.  It took every ounce of restraint I had to give in to Kseniya's "We can leave at 630 and get there right before it starts" suggestion.   I like to get to these races at least an hour in advance so I can get in the porta potty line and talk smack and ...

Today my sister posted this on Facebook: It is a poem my grandma wrote when she was a patient at an extended care facility.  We found it in with her things when she died, I think.  I wonder if my grandma wrote more things that we never knew about?  I wonder if this poem expressed a sentiment felt by many elderly folks shut away in a nursing home?  She was loved and visited often and actually loved the place.  She wrote me a letter once and told me she was in love with her doctor.  Grandma (my mom's mom) actually got a little risque in her old age.  She called my dad's brother Oswald "Odd Balls" for some reason.  She and my mom were so much alike.  My mom took such good care of her and my mom and my sister saw her almost every day for coffee.  My sister then took the same loving care of our mom. Yesterday my sister called me and wanted my mom's molasses cookie recipe.  My mom used to make the cookies every valentines day for our ...

My friend Sid and I decided to each memorize a poem and share it on our first Sunday of the month run.  Actually we walk more than we run but Sid is 85, almost 86 and I am still inspired that he even gets up at 6AM and meets me for a 3.5 mile walk.  How many 85 almost 86 year olds can do that? Anyway, last week was the first Sunday in February and I forgot to memorize a poem.  This week I remembered but found that it was much easier to memorize one when I was in grade school than it is now.  Next time I will have to start earlier.  This time I will have to bring a cheat sheet and read the parts that I forget. I have always liked Robert Frost.  So I chose this rather well known poem to at least try to memorize: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler long I stood  And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the b...

Jerry Sloan has been the coach of the Utah Jazz for the last 23 years.  Yesterday he retired, even before the all star break, saying that it was time, and that someone else needed a shot at his job.  There could be another story behind all of this, but he took the high road.  He knew when to say "when" to something that had been a big part of his life and that he was dedicated to.  I admire him for how he handled it - he didn't bash anyone - not the team nor the management.  He was not one for long, drawn out goodbyes. He said he knew he would wake up one day and know that this would be what he had to do. All Jerry reportedly expected of his players was to "come to work and do the job".  He had no patience for the hype and the big egos of some of them.  He wore suits to the games but I bet he was more comfortable in jeans and flannel shirts.   He obviously had a passion for the sport, and gave it all he had.  He was not one looking for cred...

 What is a "Chook?" you might ask, if you happen upon this blog and aren't the two people who already read it and already know what it is.  Urban dictionary calls it " A positive amount of anything".    In Australia, "Chook" is slang for chicken.  The "chook" I am referring to is not a chicken.  It is a hat or a beanie, which has  a variety of different names as I found out.  But to me, it is a hat for winter with a roll up cuff on the bottom.  It conjures up "a positive amount" of good memories of growing up and all the things my mom knitted for me and my siblings.  My mom also taught 4H and taught a lot of my friends how to knit.  My sister could knit socks which I never learned how to do.  I have knit a few sweaters.  One took me 14 years but I finished it. I thought the word "Chook" came from the Finns but I guess it is just the term we used back in Upper Michigan and maybe a few other places.  This wool (...