Walked out and back on Pueblo Canyon Rim Trail from Los Alamos Airport to top of Camp Hamilton Trail.  Skies looked dark to the south, with virga falling.  Got spit on by a few raindrops but made it back home dry and alive.  So much trash on trail below the Pajarito Cliffs site and the Eastgate Industrial Park.  I'd like to pick some up one day but it seems a big task for one person.

Spouse is fully retired from lab now but will teach a college course this Fall which shall keep him busy.  He's allowed to go back to the lab as an unpaid guest scientist starting next week which will also occupy him.

Today, we ate lunch at the senior center and right now, he's at the movie theatre.  On Mondays, ticket prices are reduced all day for seniors.

Been doing lots of hiking, as usual, but not much journaling.

Winds Calmed

Went out to walk around 4:30 pm. First mile, winds of Hades and some kind of occasional, white precip - maybe graupel. Second and third miles, terrifically odd because the sun came out and blue skies were overhead. I say "terrifically odd" because the day was mostly overcast and the mountains hid in pall of dust. Fourth mile, winds and overcast came back. Shall be interesting to see how much it snows overnight. Only an inch is predicted.

I'm now emailing these posts. I've gone back to using a subject because Mail becomes very suspicious if I don't and double checks if I'm sure I want to send a message without a subject. What would I do without this computer to supplement my brain?

Winds of Hades Upon Us - Snow to Follow

I've put off walking because the winds are blowing around so much dust. Soon, though, I'll walk and listen to the broadcast of This American Life and then NPR. We had several spring-like days last week but, alas, that is past. I wonder if I'd mind the cold as much if this house didn't leak warm air like a sieve. On last Wednesday's hike, a woman told me that she and her husband never have to turn on their furnace and sometimes even open windows to cool off in the winter. They live in a condo with a south-facing exposure and also get heat from the units above and below them. Sounds good to me! As I get older (or maybe as my thyroid gets older), I'm less tolerant of the cold.

OK, enough of that Pollyanna stuff of yesterday.  I'm already in need of another attitude revision.  I slept horribly last night. It wasn't so much the time change as it was the damnable leg cramps. At first, I fell half asleep for a while but then woke up too cold and when I dared to put another cover on, I got a cramp in my left calf.  Had to leap out of bed several times to stretch my calves and, of course, each time I got up, I peed thinking that perhaps that would hold me until morning.  When I last looked at the clock, it was 3 am.  I finally turned off the alarm and slept until 10 am but feel like a kicked around dog turd.

Good news - as you get older (I qualify), you do more of your peeing at night. The meds that would provide a solution are anticholinergics and would probably give me dementia.  The sleep doc recommended that I take dopamine agonists like Mirapex and Requip for the leg cramps but, once again, no thank you.  I think the allopathic cures would be worse than the afflictions.  Now I'm looking into something like Hyland's Leg Cramps.

Picture me, this morning, walking to the library, blue backpack burgeoning with books, grumbling inwardly that just a few days ago it seemed like Spring was here; but now, it's overcast and cooler than I, Supreme Majesty of the world, think it should be.

Along comes a neighbor, walking four, fawn-colored dogs at once. "Hello," I say to her and she replies "Lovely day for a walk!" We both continue on our way but now my eyes are open and I say to myself "It is, it is, it truly is!"

Everything is still the same - an occasional lost snowflake careens by, the mountains are still overhung with heavy clouds, my right foot still hurts, the book bag is still too heavy but my attitude is newly revised and I'm now thankful for the coolness and the beauty of the cloud-draped mountains.

Getting my 100,000 mile check up this year.  So far, the sleep doctor has dismissed my low nocturnal oxygen, in the 80's per an overnight nocturnal oximetry, as not bad enough for a sleep study.  He suggested taking Mirapex or Requip for my nocturnal leg cramps - no thanks!  Right now, I'm experimenting with increasing my vitamin B complex and so far that's helping.

Recent chest x-ray showed my heart was mildly enlarged so that, plus the low nocturnal oxygen and feeling that my exercise endurance has decreased, got me an echocardiogram of my heart and a treadmill stress test.  I haven't got the results but I assume that I'm not dying, (yet), because the cardiologist didn't need to see me again.

One good thing I learned from the stress test is that I'm not exercising hard enough.  What I mean is that there's a difference between daily 4 mile strolls (although I am faster than that!) and aerobic conditioning via hill repeats and intervals.  I lasted 12 minutes on the treadmill and was breathing very hard and I need to breathe that hard a couple of times a week to increase my aerobic conditioning.

Today I walked the first two miles of Camp May Road and did hill repeats x 2 on 2 of the steepest hills.  (Not sure of the correct terminology but first I walked up the hill, then walked down and then walked up again.) I feel like I accomplished something and plan to do something like that maybe twice a week.  Now that the trails are more snow-free (at least until after tonight's snow!), I will also try jogging intervals (jogging on asphalt and cement hurts my knees and my feet) but I won't make them as strenuous as the hill repeats.  They'll be mainly to practice jogging and hopefully work my way up to longer periods of jogging.  

It was very windy along Camp May Road.  I saw two ravens hanging out together in a tree, staying out of the wind.  When I tried to take their picture, they flew off from each side of the tree.

Took walk today with husband behind Larry Walkup Center.  I wanted to go to lower Water Canyon Trail outside Pajarito Acres because word is that the trails there are mostly dried out.  Instead, we got a late start, after stopping at the library which doesn't open until noon Sundays so I opted for spouse's suggestion to walk the open space trails behind the Walkup Center.

We started downhill on the Acid Canyon Trail and quickly realized that although there are some dry areas, there is also a lot of mud and snow patches.  The snow is probably very icy in early morning as the top layer melts and refreezes overnight.  We went as far as the high Pueblo Canyon bridge and turned around.  I completed the rest of my miles with back and forth to the airport while listening to a tape of Prairie Home Companion.  There is still too much mud and snow to make hiking on the trails truly carefree.  It's surprising how long the snow has stayed.  It's all melted in our yard.  Spring will come, Spring will come - just hold on!

I wrote this on 1/27/2012 and never did anything more with it so here it is:  idea of reincarnation - you'd probably never know if it really happened but it's comforting to think it might; this on hearing that by 2050, we'll need to address global climate change and saying out loud "I'll be dead" and wishing it weren't true and then thinking that maybe I'll be reincarnated but won't know - life is wonderful even when it isn't and it's hard to think that this "me" will one day be dead and no longer be entertained, horrified, in wonder, terrified, in awe of this thing called life - maybe the knowledge that our life will end is the source of depression, sadness - I guess the cure is don't dwell on it

Canyon Rim Trail really hopping yesterday.  Among the more memorable -  jogger with two big, leashed dogs, one on either side; bicyclist making multiple trips out and back; older couple walking their 12 year old white Scottish terrier, Mac; a passel of adorable little ones riding bikes and trikes.  Shall we nominate the Canyon Rim Trail as the most well-loved, well-used trail in Los Alamos?  I say "Yes!!"

Photography thoughts after taking a photo recently of shadows cast by exterior metal stairs: I'm a stickler for shadows.  Always have been ever since I got my first camera in my teens for Christmas.  It was a Polaroid Land camera.  Via a Google search, I found a photo of a Polaroid Land model 100 camera.  I don't know if that was the exact one I had but it sure looks like what I remember - bellows and all - and the era is right - early 60's.  The camera was expensive enough (or, rather, we were poor enough) that I paid for part of it with my allowance and Daddy paid the rest and bought it for me as a Christmas present.  Not sure, but it could have been the Christmas of my 15th year, after our Mom had died at age 39, three days before the previous Christmas. 

Didn't tell my father that part of the reason I wanted a Polaroid camera was to take photos of my face to instantly study what I looked like in pictures as opposed to looking in a mirror.  I felt like this would more objectively portray what I really looked like.  Being an overweight teenager and having mild acne didn't exactly bolster my self esteem but the pictures made me look worse than in real life because when I held the camera right-up-close to my face and didn't smile, it looked more like a mug shot.  Maybe I took the photos when I was home watching my younger brothers and sisters on the nights Daddy worked late?  Maybe I took the photos while Daddy was in the hospital dying of cancer?  I don't know for sure because I destroyed those photos!

I didn't only use a camera for self-portraits. I branched out to shooting "artsy" black and white photos of my brothers and sisters.  Maybe this was a different camera - an Instamatic?  I'd have to do some digging in my photo albums to figure this out.  Looking at old photos of my family makes me sad, though.  

Whatever camera I used and when, two of my photos even got into Ingenue magazine, a teen magazine in the 60's, when I sent them off for their readers' photos feature.  One was a close-up of my younger sister who was sitting on top of our dog house with her hair hanging down.  Another was of my oldest younger sister.  I got down low and took a photo of her standing with her arms akimbo.  Looking at the photos, someone would have thought we were inner-city children but we actually lived on two acres out in the country near Canton, OH.