6/25/2007 mcd, showers and thundershowers, 48-58
A dramatic thunderstorm blew through today with wind-driven hail up to a third of an inch across. Lightening twice crackled through the sky within a second of the house. Our roof, the road, the driveway and garden were white. I was out in the garden as the storm approached and came in to unplug the electronics but didn't think to cover the plants. The hail flattened the leaf lettuce, shredded the bok choi, punched holes in the zucchini and eggplant and snapped leaves and shoots off the tomato plants but I think most things will recover. The beans and cucumbers were still standing in beds of ice pellets at sunset.
I had plans for the day but intimidated by the effort involved, didn't accomplish much. Folded and put away clothes. Polished a few rocks. Fixed some bugs on the Maniacs site, for which I have completed everything except the password change and bulk mail pages. I'm waiting for Tony to give me access to r?.com where the Maniacs pages are hosted.
This morning I read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew for my devotional time. I resumed reading the Bible in the morning last week after conversations with Gary and Zack over the previous week or two. This morning's reading was typical in that I found a number of points on which I fall short and little in the way of encouragement. Salt that loses its flavor, a light under a basket, breaking the commandments, looking at a woman with lust, loving only those who love me in return - I can identify with all of these. Afterward I objected to Jesus that I found only condemnation in His Word and He responded "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved; ...neither do I condemn you. Do you believe me?" or something to that effect. He then referred me again to the verse He gave me through the evangelist after I was baptized: "You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth and called from its farthest regions and said to you, 'You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'" Is 41:9,10. This time I decided to believe Him, for He has repeatedly reminded me of this, and has never indicated that He condemns me, while I always in almost all things tend to condemn myself. But if there is anything I believe about the Lord, it is that He called me and specifically gave me those verses in Isaiah. So I cannot explain why I am accepted in spite of my failure to bear fruit after all these years, but with His assistance and contrary to evidence from my own life, I will henceforth believe Him in this.

6/26/2007 pc, quiet, 48-68 This morning I read Matthew 9:13: "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.". The righteous here are those who earn God's favor by their sacrifices. They don't acknowledge the need of a Savior and don't accept His call. As a result, they don't share His character of mercy. God calls sinners who recognize their need and respond to His call. As sinners, they have nothing, neither mercy nor repentance, to commend themselves to Him. The character to which they are called is His gift to them which He will give them as/after they come to Him. Likewise with repentance, the prerequisite to conversion - it too is the gift of God, received after the sinner responds to His call. Repentance has always been a hurdle I've been unable to surmount; I have never been able to come up with true repentance in my heart. But if I understand this verse correctly, it is something God works in my heart as I receive Him.

Daniel and I drove down to Portland in the evening to buy a used slalom kayak he'd found on the Internet. I wasn't excited about the long drive but was looking forward to the opportunity to spend some time with him. We talked some about our spiritual experiences. I described my chronic doubt and recent acceptance that Jesus will save me. Daniel explained that he knows by faith that he is saved because he has asked Jesus to save him and believes that he does. There was more - about sin, about how difficult it is to perceive the work of the Holy Spirit within ourselves, about how soon Jesus will come, the time of Jacob's trouble - we talked most of the way from Olympia to Portland. When we reached our destination we found two kayaks available so I bought the second one so we could paddle together. Recreational kayaks are completely different now, short stubby plastic boats designed for playing in holes and running water we used to consider extreme. The slalom boats are fiberglass but flatter and sharper-edged than the boats I used 25 years ago - harder to fit into too, or maybe it's just that I'm older and stiffer now. Talking about kayaking brought back old memories of fitting and fixing boats, learning to paddle, playing in whitewater, the anticipatory fear before a new run - not quite sure I want to take this sport up again. Another memory from the past, J is still at the heart of the northwest kayaking scene, even racing on the US masters team.

7/07/2007Mt Rainier - Sunrise sunny, 60
We didn't actually make it up to Sunrise until near sunset. Jackie came with us; a friend of Daniel's from Eco Dorm, she's been visiting her aunt and uncle in Kirkland for the past several days. Her aunt brought her down from Kirkland after we returned from church. The boys and I went for the first time in quite a while. Bill preached on just what I've experienced recently, our need to persevere in coming to Jesus, trusting Him for our salvation rather than looking to ourselves for evidence of progress. I took it as confirmation that my recent experience is from Jesus. Ironically my sore back may be another confirmation in that the enemy attacks us more vigorously when we draw near to God. I believe I've made a significant advance in choosing to accept His grace and believe in His love. Now I have an opportunity to trust Him in my sore back, which has only become worse over the past 5 days as I've attempted to exercise through it. It threatens to prevent me from all of the activities I was looking forward to during my upcoming leave - running, hiking, biking, rock-hunting, kayaking. I will trust Jesus in this too though, knowing that He does love me so I need not fear what He permits to happen to me.
A broken layer of high clouds drifted over in the afternoon so the light wasn't always as good as we'd hoped but David and I took pictures anyhow. The rangers scolded us for trampling with our bare feet the new vegetation emerging in the meadows where we'd ventured to photograph yellow avalanche lilies. Perhaps elk hooves are gentler. Susan came with us so that Jackie would feel more comfortable and enjoyed being out for the first time in a long while - it's been several years since we've been up to the mountains together. Daniel brought his snowboard and found one narrow snowfield which was still continuous from the ridgecrest west of the lodge down to the valley beyond. He handled it without much difficulty while I took pictures and Susan held her breath. While he climbed back up to us I hiked a little further up the trail in search of photo ops, found several. On the way back home Susan let Jackie drive. I admired the loving way she instructed and reassured her, a way that the world doesn't often offer. Back at Ranchito's the chips and salsa were delicious as always.

7/12/2007 pc, 82 Dramatic sunset as Daniel and I picked up the last bales of hay from a field Zack mowed. The mammary clouds developed quickly and dissipated just as quickly. I called David on his cell phone to alert him to go out and take photos since I didn't have my camera but the clouds were already losing their shape by the time he made it outside.

7/13/2007 Home - showers, then pc, 81
Last day of work before my unofficial "Sabbatical". I swam early at Deep Lake before picking up Marc. Misty gray stratus hung very low over the plateau as I drove towards the foothills. No-one was at the park except for the caretakers. As I walked past them the stillness was broken by the snap and crash of a tree limb falling out of sight on the other side of the parking lot. The water was fairly warm due to recent very hot weather; I used my sleeveless wetsuit nonetheless, as much for safety as for warmth. Underneath me the water was dark gray green grading into the usual dull green up ahead of me and a pearly gray right at the surface. Quite pretty. A drizzly haze obscured the alder and fir at the far end of the lake. It felt good to be active again after almost a week with no exercise and I swam vigorously for about 30 minutes. Just as I was getting back out of the water I saw a quick flash in the sky followed by thunder ten seconds later, and big raindrops splashed across the still water around me. The heavy rain held off until after I'd changed and was on my way to Marc's.
At work I sat in several meetings and provided direction on a couple of architectural decisions for Zeus. As I did so I wondered how the conversation would have gone in my absence. It seemed to me that my contributions in both meetings helped bring two somewhat disparate parties - two tecnical teams in the first case, and the project sponsor and user representative in the second - to a consensus. I think they would have come to the same conclusions, though perhaps not as quickly or easily, had I not been there, but it didn't seem that anyone else on our team could fill my role. It will be interesting to see if in my absence someone else on the team steps up to provide that combination of technical understanding and business knowledge. Busy with meetings, interviews and lunch out at Chantanee, I didn't make any progress on the various tasks I needed to complete before leaving.

7/15/2007 pc, 78
Didn't quite reach 80 today but felt warmer than that due to the humidity. We attended Shane and Caitlin's wedding at the airstrip in the morning. Pastor Bill officiated and Justin held Chloe, now 9(?) months old. They were married some time ago in a civil service after Caitlin decided to keep the baby and Shane decided to marry Caitlin. I think the wedding reflects a reconciliation of sorts between the families and between the young couple and the church. The weather cooperated with sunshine and a few clouds for shade. Birds accompanied the musical prelude, including a pileated woodpecker, Hutton's vireo, Wilson's warbler and a western tanager. The Hutton's was only the second I've heard this summer, the first being at the Lake Youngs Ultra.
In the afternoon I ran 17 miles - the Green Valley loop clockwise. It was hot and I was very tired the last couple of miles, finished 3lbs lighter than when I started despite drinking a pint and a half of Gatorade during the run.

7/18/2007 Rain all day, but only 0.3" accumulation. I went in to work in the late afternoon and packed up my rocks, brought a couple boxes home after talking with Linh for an hour or so .
On the way in to work I met Steve (K.A.S. Transport) and picked up Daniel's kayak. It survived the long cross-country trip with no problems at all, and no moisture made it through the inner layer of plastic wrap and old flannel sheets.

7/20/2007 Rain all day again, 0.7" this time. I ordered a new domain, littlemarathon.com, from godaddy. I plan to put the Rattlesnake Marathon site under it, as well as the Maniacs pages, rather than use brianpen.com. Planted beets by the workshop.

7/21/2007 Sabbath Humid today but no rain, and even some sunshine mid-morning. I ran the Crescent Forest ultra, an informal little race on trails and logging roads through a private woodlot in Gig Harbor. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do the whole thing but felt stronger on my third and fourth laps than on the first two. Ran with Monte most of the way after birding the first couple of laps. Highlight was a mixed flock of small birds which included two Wilson's, an Orange-crowned and a Black-throated gray warbler in addition to chickadees, kinglets? and a downy woodpecker. Nice view of a flying pileated too.

7/22/2007 Rain all day again, 0.4" Yesterday at lunch after the race Steve Barrick encouraged Monte and I to consider doing the Tahoe Triple because he was thinking of doing it if he could have someone to run with, so this morning I spent a couple hours researching places to stay and figuring what it would take to go down there and run it. Susan sounds as though she'd be interested in spending a few days at Lake Tahoe. Cost is a bit of a deterrent, about $1500 for the three days, so I'm not sure about it yet. In the afternoon I created a website for the Rattlesnake Lake marathon, a little marathon Monte and I (and our families) are planning to host this August 19. It took all afternoon but turned out pretty well.

7/23/2007 Still cloudy but mostly dry. Went for a walk with Susan this morning, 2 miles, then ran 3 miles in the afternoon. Quads a little stiff and sore from the long run two days ago. I spent most of the day working on the Maniac site, fixing the remaining bugs (that I know about). Talking to Tony about automatic calculation of statistics, we realized that we need a way to determine, for any period of time, who upgraded their star count or passed a milestone like 100 marathons. That means I need to log changes to statistics. In thinking about it I decided to implement the ability to manually save a snapshot of statistics rather than logging all changes - it's easier and should be sufficient to meet the need for periodic, ie monthly, reporting for the newsletter. I spent the afternoon coding that change.
I think maybe the Vaux's swifts in the chimney fledged today - we haven't heard them all day. Also on our walk, Susan and I saw and heard a few rough-winged swallows over Henderson's field. If they showed up at our house, they'd be a new yard bird.

7/24/2007 Return of the sunshine. Beautiful day, 70 and partly cloudy, but today was the day for deploying the new Maniacs site so I spent much of it at the computer working on the data extract and setting up the new site under littlemarathon.com. I did take time to walk down to the river with Susan and the boys. Not many birds active but there were still a few bank swallows coursing up and down over the water. In the evening I played tennis with Daniel, David and Zack. 23 games was probably overdoing it a little. Zack and I played singles then we all played doubles until it got dark. Back home I ended up staying up until 2AM redoing the data extract after Tony pointed out some problems with missing data.
Installed and tried out the new speed reading software yesterday, and got David to try it today. He tested at 260 wpm in lesson 1, better than I expected. He's not self-motivated to do that, or his summer reading, for which he needs to read two books and write 20 half-page journal entries about them in the next 5 weeks. Scary thought.

7/25/2007 Another beautiful day. Another intense day of work on the Maniacs site. We're live but in response to Marc #9's reservations about Maniacs updating their own star counts I added functionality to lock star calculation and fixed several other bugs which cropped up. Also added the first help page, for My Preferences, which is perhaps the most confusing functionality in the site. In the late afternoon I took a break to run O'Grady three times. Energy petered out on the third lap but did the first two in 52 minutes, avg hr 150.
Trapped the orange tomcat in the workshop this morning. I went in there for something and startled him sleeping on the boxes on the top shelf over by the garden tools. He jumped up and raced around the workshop looking for a way out but before he found the doors I slammed them shut. I barricaded the spot behind the workbench where the sheetrock is cracked so that he won't be able to claw his way out, like he did last week through the garage window screen, then I set up the Havahart trap with a fresh can of catfood. When I didn't see him all day I wondered if he'd found a way out but after dark I searched more thoroughly and found him hiding in the corner by the garden tools again. I left him alone but I won't let him go. Twice in the past year he's attacked Puss and sent her to the vet to the tune of about $300 altogether, so he's going on a one-way trip to animal control once he gets hungry enough to take the bait.
Two new yard birds today: a screech owl hooting (pattern is an accelerating series of short hoots, like a dropped pingpong ball) at 2AM somewhere down our road, and the rough-winged swallows from down the street. Difficult to distinguish from bank swallows in flight, just a little more uniform brown above with somewhat broader wings and heavier flight, also a dusky throat and upper breast. Bank swallows show white on the sides of the throat above a dark patch; in our area at least, the dark band does not appear to cross the breast. Their flight is more buoyant and erratic and their wings a little darker than the back. The rough-wings were calling repeatedly, a short grating brrreet. Down at the river the bank swallows were silent.

7/26/2007 Feeling very anxious about the Dragnet work I haven't yet done - clenching my teeth so hard at night that I wake up with a headache. Each day I mean to do that and each day I don't get it done. After a walk this morning Susan and I went out shopping for tile for our bathroom. We need to get the tile so Chuck can proceed with work in the bathrooms. She's anxious about that - had a large hive on her tongue most of the afternoon which subsided as we reviewed and came close to selecting the stone and tile for our bathroom. The current candidates are an olive-green marble/granite with gold highlights (Golden Musk) for the vanity top and shower shelf, and a slightly crackled pearly tile with a hint of green (Grazia Rixi).

7/27/2007 More tile shopping, this time at Oregon Marble and Tile in Georgetown. We picked out a different green stone called Costa Esmerelda, a semi-glossy plain white 4" tile for the wall and a gray randomly-patterned 6" floor tile. Susan is frustrated with Chuck and with the process so I'm kind of taking over the selection and coordination of the work. She liked the stone though.