Last night, we saw a movie called “Prisoners” with Hugh Jackman. and Jake Gyllenhaal. It was average at best. I was pretty bored (but then I am a pretty harsh critic of movies). The best part of last night was that Binita and I were both in bed and asleep by 10:30PM. I didn’t even hear the fireworks going off at midnight.
Well, HAPPY NEW YEAR! As for new year resolutions, I will blog about those in a the coming days.
After lazing around and walking the dogs in the morning, I went to Lifetime Fitness in the afternoon. Since I was running 2+ hours, I wanted a relatively flat route and the terrain around there is relatively flat (unlike my house where there are nothing but hills). I ended up doing 16 miles in 2 hours and 16 minutes with a single stop to fuel up. It was a satisfying run!
Since it was a gorgeous day, Binita invited Rahul-Janki and Mitch-Nancy (with kids) for a picnic by the lake. We sat and talked for a long time punctuated by bites of cheese and crackers and bread and chips and sips of wine and beer and non-adult beverages. As the sun was setting, we played a “let’s spot Venus” game. Mitch and Andrew were tossing the football and of course the football slipped in the lake and floated away. The easy lake current made sure that it was out of reach floating in the middle of the lake as darkness fell.
We came home and saw Michigan State beat Stanford in the Rose Bowl (which made B quiet happy). She kept saying “Go Sparties” (I doubt if anyone in Michigan actually uses this war-cry other than Martha).
B and I had reservations at Pure Sushi (our favorite sushi in town). As we were driving back home at around 9:30PM, Binita said, “Let’s go retrieve that ball from the lake.” I looked at her. She was serious. I was excited. She doesn’t propose these adventures in the dark often. And dark it was; pitch dark!
We parked the car and walked up to the lake. It was a moonless night and ambient light was pretty much non existent. Binita used her phone flashlight as we walked on the perimeter of the lake looking for the ball. After a few dozen yards, we found it floating about a foot from the edge of the lake. Just as I went to retrieve it, Binita asked me to stop because she wanted to take a picture.
She fumbled with the phone which prompted me to take out my phone to take a picture. I snapped a picture with a flash just as I heard some rustling next to me. I payed it no heed and snapped another picture only to hear more rustling.
I asked Binita to shine her flashlight towards the noise; lo and behold, in all his glory, about 10 feet from me was a javelina. He came towards us. We backed up. He came some more towards us. We backed up more. The ball lay floating in the lake. He came up some more which prompted me to yell a prehistoric-sounding loud cry which scared the bejesus out of him. He ran into the bushes.
I proudly looked at Binita who of course couldn’t see me strutting because it was too dark! I moved towards the lake to retrieve the ball again only to realize that the bastard javelina had come out of the bushes and was charging straight at us. It was time to run and run we did. He kept coming closer. I turned to face him for a moment and yelled at him. This time he was not scared. He kept coming. I thought about throwing my phone at him as I ran to the car.
As we got to the car, he hesitated. B got in the car and I banged the car making a metallic noise. He finally got bored of us and left. We waited for a few minutes before gathering up enough courage to retrieve the ball. This time, we wised up and shone the car headlights straight at the lake.
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| Deadly javelina teeth (no, I did not take this picture) |
We were lucky today. Javelinas have serious tusks that can rip some meat off you. They are wild animals and we have invaded their territory.
Welcome to 2014. The ride has begun.
I got excellent news from the radiologist today. My X-rays are all clear. Hello World!! I will sign up for Ironman Cabo in a few days.