March 31st Post

There’s something inexplicably therapeutic about watching that black line move smoothly underneath you as you’re swimming a lap; maybe it’s just the satisfaction of knowing that you have your face in the water and have finally managed to coordinate breathing with large movements.

Anyway, that therapeutic feeling was replaced this morning with a weak left shoulder and a relatively large amount of unnecessary gasping. I finally realized that today just wasn’t the best day for swimming; I pulled myself out, feeling like I was supposed to apologize to the lifeguard for tricking him into thinking that I was actually going to get an effective workout today.

Since then, I’ve been  at the hospital where I am precepting a new nurse who is doing all of the work, leaving me with worrying about more important things in life such as stalking old friends on Facebook (you know, the kind that I want to know what they’re up to but have no intention of ever establishing communication with) or calling my wife to offer moral support after Braeden managed to practically flood the kitchen (he had a hayday with the refrigerator water dispenser for about ten minutes).

So, here’s to another productive day! I think Steph might be here now….she’s bringing me Taco Bell food….

Just FYI, kayaking in a lake is much more exhausting than it appears. You remember that paddler who effortlessly glides along in the movies at a clip that could outpace a fish? It’s fake. In reality, there’s a red-faced, stocky guy wearing an 8-mm wetsuit; the water’s way too cold for him to actually get wet (the wetsuit is supposed to save his life if he was to capsize, then lose the boat, then lose his life vest, then suddenly become incapable of swimming for more than the 5 minutes it would take to get to shore). Anyway, so this red-faced guy is heaving along, sweating bullets, trying to make sure that his fishing pole hasn’t suddenly freed itself from the fishing-pole-holder in the back of the 12-foot fishing kayak. The lake is a whole lot longer than it appeared from the cliffs, so that easy four-mile route that he’d planned on having done within an hour has suddenly become TWO hours, mostly due to the fact that enormous fish keep jumping clear out of the water next to him, distracting him. Consequently, he can’t seem to paddle in a very straight line.

At least he caught a fish (by the tail, incidentally, not because it actually bit anything), the biggest one he’s ever even seen in a lake in real life. Unfortunately, he dropped the dang thing literally as he was putting it in the boat, and flopped back into the water, breaking the hook off in the process. That’s okay, it was a carp anyway so I’m not sure how exciting it would have been to eat in the first place.

Well, of course I am that stocky guy , and that was my adventure on Friday. It was actually a blast, and I can hardly wait to tackle the river/lake again; this time, however, I think I will put in closer than two miles from the place where I want to start fishing, since it’s obviously no silly jaunt to get that far.

I’m into month #2 of my triathlon training, so it’s going to be getting a lot more intense soon! I am feeling good about it, though, and I think that it will be a good month to start losing some of this extra poundage that I’ve packed on over the holidays. I haven’t lost any yet, probably more due to the fact that (1) I can’t seem to eat less and (2) I think I must be building some muscle mass with all this exercise. Mostly #1, though.

Conference was awesome, as usual. I really miss those times as a kid/college student/missionary when I would listen to General Conference and be like, “That is awesome counsel for someday if I ever need that type of counsel.” Nowadays, it’s more like every talk addresses something that I need to be fixing in my life! But that’s ok, I love listening to the talks and feeling so uplifted by all of the messages. I commented to Stephanie the other day that there are so many people in the world who seem to bring out the worst, it is wonderful to be with or influenced by people who when they talk make you want to be a better person.