Walkies

I threw my "normal" schedule out this morning and met Dusty and Julie (and Aragon) for a 2 1/2 mile walk along the Fox River Trail. It's such a nice place to walk, much nicer than in a mall going round and round and seeing the same people and breathing the same air over and over. I'm torn, I love to loll around reading the paper and doing the crossword but I also love getting out and walking too. What to do? What to do? The only problem with walking before work is that I get all sweaty when I walk. I did bring a clean shirt to wear but, still, I'm sweaty and possibly smelly. Not the best way to be at work all day, but I wasn't able to walk on Tuesday and won't be able to tomorrow so today was my only opportunity this week. If I have people or a person to meet, I go, if it's up to just me, I loll. So I went and now I'm sweaty but I feel great.

June 16--Bonaventure Island, Quebec. "Three-hundred-thousand birds," Lew grumbled as he climbed the slick rocks, "and every last one of them shitting with abandon. I bet there isn't one square meter untouched by this stuff." His foot slipped and if he hadn't had a good grip on his handholds he'd have been cartwheeling down, bouncing his bones to powder on the red granite cliffs. It had sounded like a good career being a wildlife biologist, working out in the fresh air, studying animals and keeping them safe. He had been lucky to get a fellowship to study the declining population of the Eastern Gannet, a seabird that nested on the cliffs of Bonaventure Island. He just hadn't bargained for it rooming with a few hundred thousand of its closest friends. "I should have been an accountant," he said as a gull, a Laughing Gull he thought, dive bombed him for getting too close to its nest, as if he wouldn't go somewhere else if he had the chance. A glob of sticky wetness slid down his cheek and he wiped it off. "Damn birds." The job just didn't pay well enough to endure getting pecked and shat upon.

Poor Lew. Some people are just not cut out for field work. Go for a walk today!
--Barbara