December 9, 2006

Today was the second long slow distance run. I was not taking part in today's run.

No I was miles away enjoying the melting snow and ice of Missouri.

I was taking my rest "on the farm."

I was at home with one of the inspirations for me running: my Mom!

Don't let that smile fool you. She's one tough cookie! She had cancer and survived, but I don't know if that was anything compared to having raise my brother and me. If we weren't beating on each other certainly we were in some other type of trouble. But she had good training: Mom worked at the St. Louis Zoo as a zoo keeper for many years, studied monkeys in Costa Rica; so it wasn't as if she was unaccustomed to dealing with animals.

Speaking of which there are plenty on the farm. Cows, chickens, geese and these:
This bird stands about 10 inches tall and it scares the hell out of me. This is Jason and he is my Mother's bird. He's vicious, stay away from this bird. I was across the room when I took this picture. To give you an idea of this bird's viciousness I offer this: this bird once crawled down my mother's arm, casually pecked his way across the table, then charged me with open beak! I jumped and made for the stairs and I'll be damned but this little bugger FLEW after me! My mother thought that was pretty funny.

And then there's this animal:
Tige (as in Tiger with out the -er) is a very affectionate dog. Since I don't have a dog I always enjoy spending time with Tige. Tige doesn't like to sleep alone and to be quite honest there's something comforting about having a dog sleeping at your feet. The thing with Tige is he really doesn't like to share the covers. Its a hell of thing to wake up to the sounds of the low growl of a pissed off dog.

That's about it for the farm. Other than resting I ate a lot: bacon almost everyday and plenty of coffee.

-Jim