Seems like I've taken a hiatus from blogging when I look at how long ago I did the last post. This past week and a half I have had a volunteer or end of the year school commitment most nights. At lunch, when I actually stop to take a concentrated time, the time seems to be consumed with the prep work for everything else happening after work. Plus the rain and rain and did I mention rain. I have been trying to increase my running miles to improve my times and get off this weight plateau that I have been hovering around for months. I have this window of time between when I get up and have to be back to the house for wake up duty and to start the shower sequence. Starting at 5AM or a little before, I have to allow myself enough time to wake up myself with the early coffee. That window of running time at most can allow for a 4 mile run but more often that time seems to tighter and I am lucky to get in 3 miles. The rain doesn't help though last week I was out there most mornings rain or not for 3-4 miles. This morning the rain was heavy but I was determined, having taken yesterday off to rest a twinge in the foot, and though it was a little slow but I got in 3.3 miles tightly squeezing through this window.

My cell phone is fading. Fading in the sense that I have a hard time hearing people. First thinking that it's the coverage and then that I know my hearing has taken a dip in one ear and now I'm thinking its going in both, until my teen borrowed it and said Dad, what's up with your phone you can't hear anything. It has reached the stage where speaker phone or head set is about the only way it works, which limits my options. I have had it for a few years years and it is a few levels above basic, but it does the job. Cell phone service is one of those things I won't pay for gadget functionality (I have other places I can get that), so I am looking for a replacement that fit my limited plan before it totally dies.

Because my phone is on the simple side, I find that uploading mobile photos a real pain. Of course it came with no cables, so taking a photo requires uploading it to Facebook then downloading it to the laptop and uploading it again to the blog. Makes you weary just following that.

I had scheduled to take a day off a couple of Tuesdays ago to be in Boston for a performance that my eldest was to be in. The show was to start at 8:00pm and run 2 1/5 hours, so we figured we'd make a full day of it and accept that it would be pretty late when we got back home. But then another performance time opened up on the weekend and since we'd be driving back in the wee hours of the morning and then going to work the next day, we jumped at the new time. (the show was fantastic BTW)

But then what about Tuesday. I could go to work, there is always a reason to go to work. But I'd already rearranged meetings and no one was expecting me and since I already loose enough unused leave time, I was just quiet about the change and took it off.

So we decided to play tourist for the day and drive up into some areas we hadn't been to in years and just wander the roads.

Massachusetts is an interesting state in that at one end is Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod and definitely at sea level and at the opposite corner borders the mountains of Vermont and New York. A little factoid is that Massachusetts really doesn't have any mountains. The area I live in, the Berkshires, are the foothills of the Taconic range and Green mountains of Vermont. The word foothills sound somewhat lame and leaves an impression that they are much smaller than they really are. Some of the hills up north can look like mountains, such as Mount Greylock, the highest point in the state, but even it doesn't meet the "definition" of a mountain. No question, we are at a higher elevation and as you drive north towards Williamstown and North Adams the hills get steeper and rougher. The roads wind up the sides of the foot hills and there is a section called the hairpin turn which The photo at the top is a miserable representation of the view at the northern most part of my state looking across to Vermont.


The cell phone photo doesn't do it justice as this is from the top looking off to Vermont and multiple valleys and ridges.

On our day trip we wandered along the northern highway stopping in Shelburne Falls for lunch and checking out the Bridge of Flowers and the Glacial Potholes and off to the small town of Greenfield. Amazed as always how things had changed since the days I'd lived there 30 years ago. It was much more rustic, less built up (and by city standards it isn't built up that much now) A good use of a day off.