Got our second pair of training shoes this morning. Unfortunately, that was the best part of today so far -- we're stressed about the lack-of-job situation, low-paying contract work, that sort of thing. Plus we're both cranky. Can't even share a bag of chips without some snarling.

Oh, well. At least I posted three more gos pictures in the Photos section!

We did it! We walked from Redwood Shores to Palo Alto -- that's just over twelve miles. That trek was another of our seemingly impossible goals from months ago, and other than some swollen hobbit hands, it went without a hitch. Now we're looking forward to doing it again.

Have to figure out what to do about the hands, though. By mile 10 my pulse was pounding around my wedding band and my hands looked like inflated rubber gloves. It doesn't last long but it's no fun. Any tips out there?

The New House smell is gone, replaced by the roar of Overactive Furnace. Being cleaned out has excited our furnace so much that it blasts us with hot air at the tiniest provocation. We are turning into raisins. We will be lucky if the cat does not shed all his fur and become entirely bald.

(Complain, complain, complain. But, honestly, which is worse? No heat at all, or constant, life-sucking heat that wilts the plants?)

Updated the gos diary in the Photos section.

Six miles yesterday, including all the exercises at the parcourse. We even spotted another new-hatched group of goslings. Thirteen! Alas, I did not have my camera.

Afterward, I took off and went shopping with Mom. I haven't been shopping for ages, due to the layoff, and haven't had much mom-time either. It was grand. Tony joined us in the evening and we had dinner with our friend Molly, visiting from Japan. She was so blown away by surprising things -- pot roast on the menu, large serving sizes, planters of poppies just outside the restuarant. Remind me not to move to Tokyo.

Seven miles today, walking to REI and back. This is not amazing milage but represents a huge victory anyway; when we started training, REI seemed impossibly far. Today we finally did it and it was no big deal. Celebrated by going to a matinee of The Scorpion King, which turned out to be much better than we anticipated.

Now, back to work. Tony is organizing a collection of his old game designs; I am finally finishing a batch of book illustrations.

Glorious, glorious. The DUCT-SUCKER just came and went. The old filter got sucked out and replaced, so now we have heat again. Best yet, the guy vacuumed nine years of dust and crud from all the heating ducts, the attic, and the furnace, so we now have that New House Smell. (The vacuum itself was far bigger than we imagined; so big it had to sit on the front stoop while its giant hose snaked up the stairs and through the hole to the attic. The hose roared and rattled and quaked as stuff rattled all the long, long way down to the giant bag below.)

No walking today; just lots and lots of chores, bills, mailings, and hopefully some writing later on.

Good news from the House of Thaw: Summer weather! It's downright comfortable in here, at least at the moment. As a bonus, the DUCT-SUCKER is now coming on Monday rather than Wednesday, though he wonders if perhaps our sucked-up heater filter damaged our furnace before we turned it off. If so, we're not fixing it until fall.

Now we're off for a training walk, and also to watch the regatta at the lagoon.

(Note: Posted a super new gos picture in Photos. Twenty-one in a single shot.)

There's a new game a-waitin' for you in the games to play section. Check it out!

Day Five in the House of Ice: We got out the space heater, but it's not much help. Turns out that the DUCT-SUCKER can't come until next Wednesday; we must face five more days without heat. BRRRR. If these updates suddenly stop, it is because frostbite has claimed my fingers.

Tony did a lot of cleanup and refinements in the Games section. I added two new gos photos and reversed the album order, so the most recent day appears first.

Five miles and and seventeen new goslings today. Miles in our training log and goslings in the Photos section, though my smartmedia card spazzed out and I lost a pic of four of them. Does anyone know how to extract pictures from a spazzy smartmedia card?

My stomach hurts. It's freezing in here with no heater. I'm shutting down and going to bed.

I wasn't kidding about the wind. Yesterday's official score was 50mph -- enough to cause blackouts. What were we thinking?

Wind! Hurricane force! Well, practically. Enough to make whitecaps in the lagoon, anyway. We bundled up, walked to Starbucks, and hurried back home with two grande hot chocolates. Brrr. We can't even turn on the heater in the house because the DUCT-SUCKER hasn't come yet to suck out the missing filter. (See 4/9.)

Spotted nine new goslings today. Pictures in the Photos section.

Updated all the gos photos into album format, organized by date. Go to the Photos section and check it out.

No walking today because of intense wind. We did an hour of strength yoga instead, sweated like mad, then shared a bag of garlic soy chips. Disgusting. Now getting ready for an evening of computer games and the Chinese Ghost Story DVD; also planning to order hamburgers to get the nasty soy chip taste out of my mouth, but Tony doesn't know that part yet.

Irene rode the train here yesterday and had a sleepover. This morning we treated her to an 8 mile training walk in the hottest weather yet this year. She may never come back. She was a good sport, though, and even did all the exercises at the parcourse -- even the goofy one where you have to hop and kick like a dancing flamingo.

Now we have crashed and are watching Dante's Peak on cable. It's a lot better (read: gorier) than we remembered.

Walked six miles. This brings our training total to 300 exactly! The six today should not have been a big deal but they were -- we ended up with mild heat exhaustion. I collapsed dead asleep as soon as we made it home, and Tony has a sunburn. We need some hot-weather gear, pronto!

Posted the next gos photo in the Photos section. Getting pictures is actually a challenge at this stage, because the adults are protective and bite anything within fifteen feet. And they bite hard. I know.

HAPPY GOS DAY!

Gos Day is the day the goslings first emerge in the big Canadian Goose flock down the street. We wait all winter for Gos Day, and when it finally comes we celebrate. This year we're going to do a photo essay as they grow, so please go visit our updated Photos section to see the first six goses of the year!

Tony is at another interview right now; his second at this company. We're encouraged, of course. But we still can't risk the bad juju by posting details... sorry!

I am dealing with more mundane stuff. Bills. Emails. My knee is still infected and disgusting, despite the neosporin regime. I also must call the DUCT-SUCKER to come over so we can use the heater again. (Backstory: we installed a new filter in the heater intake vent a few months ago. No big deal, right? But now it is gone. Vanished. The heater has sucked it up. We hope the DUCT-SUCKER -- we can hardly believe this is a real service, but it is -- can suck it back out.)

Went to the Giants game yesterday and finally broke our curse. Until now, they lost every game we attended; we started to feel kind of guilty about going at all. But yesterday they won handily, so we're looking forward to the rest of the season.

My knee is still corroded. Have gone on a regime of neosporin (KNEE-osporin, get it?) twice a day until the oozing subsides. Nasty.

We got three pledge letters back in the mail today -- a new record!

Today was Rhonda Gets Her Way Day, in honor of all the work I did on the taxes this year. (We filed this morning, despite my having technically finished the forms a month ago. We owed so much money, we figured there was really no hurry.) My day entailed Godiva chocolate, a shoe-trying-on spree, and a Jamba walk (four miles). The only black cloud is the continuing abomination and goo from my knee.

The server has been wonky for the past few days, hence no updates till now. You really didn't want all the stories of pus and corruption from my injured knee, anyway. Trust me on this.

Another interview for Tony. It started as just a telephone interview this morning, but it he apparantly sounded good because they invited him to come for an afternoon meeting in person. (We're still not sharing any details beyond that, though. It would be bad juju. Sorry!)

Other than that, mostly pizza-eating laziness. We have temporarily chickened out of Operation Flow Control Valve. We didn't even walk anywhere; my knee is black and angry and it hurts to even put on a pair of jeans. Yuck.

Ten miles with Stephen in Big Basin, on a trail marked 'Warning: Strenuous'. Lots of hills. One of us fell, bruised one knee and got a big, blackberry-colored bruise/scrape on the other. Guess who it was. Me, of course. (I actually fell twice, but the second time didn't involve any blood so it hardly counts.)

We feel fine, but tomorrow we're going to hang around the house anyway. We started Operation Flow Control Valve last week, as a side mission to our old Operation Faucet; the flow control valve under one of our sinks is broken. Replacing it would be much simpler if the old valve wasn't stripped, screwed on incorrectly, or somehow broken in a way that makes it impossible to remove in a normal fashion. Tomorrow we try brute force.