The rain has returned. Early spring in Oregon means everything's gone green: the grass and the flowers and even some of the trees. The daffodils have bloomed, and the tulips have announced their intention to do the same. Trees are budding; as I look out the window, I see that the neighbor's dogwood sports spots of pinkish-purple. The snow peas that we planted a couple of weeks ago have sprouted, are starting their long and twisting climb up the trellis.

The sky cleared briefly earlier this afternoon. I thought it might be possible to squeeze in a bike ride. It was windy, though (the Weather Channel website said winds 23mph out of the south), and the skies were dark, so I stayed in. It rained a half hour later and has not stopped since.

My legs are sore anyhow. After riding outdoors during the first four days of the month, I took a couple of days off from working out. The past three days I've returned to the gym, newly focused on strength training. My rides convinced me that my aerobic fitness was fine but that my strength was woeful even by my standards.

I've done little aerobic exercise during the past three days. Instead, I've done from six to eight Nautilus machines per day, concentrating on leg strength. Now my muscles are sore, but in a good way. Long hot baths help. My muscles are tired enough that I didn't work out today, but I'll be back in the gym tomorrow.

My first day in the gym, on January fourth, I did two miles on the treadmill in 33:40. I was depressed by this. Four years ago, I was doing two miles in fifteen minutes at a two degree incline! I set a goal to be able to do two miles in twenty minutes at a one degree incline by April first. This still isn't a great speed, but it at least shows some signs of physical fitness. I surprised myself yesterday by running two miles in 19:53! No incline, but still... I had not expected to be fit enough to perform at that level.

We went to a surprise birthday party for Jeremy last night. Jennifer orchestrated a casino night at Julie and Joel's house and arranged a conspiracy to get Jeremy there without knowing of the party. Everything went as planned and he was quite surprised. The casino games were fun, though I lost all of my "money" in a last-ditch effort to obtain a windfall at the craps table. I'd never played craps before; it's an enjoyable game, with enough skill involved to give the player the illusion that he has some chance of success against the house. This is an illusion of course, but a fun one nonetheless.

It's been a quite day today. For part of the day, I indulged my occasional penchant for junk television by watching MTV Cribs. What a strange show. Celebreties give tours of their houses and then MTV edits the footage to make it more edgy. Bizarre. (Why does MTV's site run so slowly? It takes a long time for even the front page to load.)

That's probably enough junk television for this month.

I spent most of the day doing web design. Jeff had spotted a number of problems with the Wilcox Arredondo site, so I spent a couple of hours fixing those. While fixing the problems, I tweaked some other things, touching up photos, changing to more attractive fonts, encoding e-mail addresses so that they're safer from spammers.

Working on WACO's site gave me the urge to work on this site, so I whipped up a template for the foods section. There's not content yet, but there's a working prototype for the front page. If I felt more industrious, I'd work on other sections today, too.

I don't feel more industrious.

I feel a little tired and I'm going to take a nap.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Unseasonable   This weather is unbelievable. It's gorgeous. I love it, though I know we'll pay for it come summer.

2003 — Vagabonding   I sat on the dirty, white -- but cool -- marble and felt the air thick around me. The energy and power of that that temple made me cry.