Weddings and Such

Was chatting this morning with a friend about The Wedding. Not mine, mind you. Kate and William. Kind of silly isn't it? How much attention it's getting. People are just crazy about it. I don't really care for it. At first I thought it was dumb, and then I read this article over at NRO about it, and now it doesn't seem so bad. It's a good thing they're getting married, right? And so if all the histrionics associated with the royal wedding do nothing more than highlight the institution of marriage itself, then it's a good thing, isn't it? Allow me to quote a little from the article:

You needn’t be a royal watcher to join wholeheartedly in the rejoicing at a wedding. And we should celebrate — not because the principals are royalty, but because marriage itself badly needs reinforcing. For the past several decades, we’ve been conducting an experiment to determine whether marriage really matters all that much to society. The results are in. But the news hasn’t yet been taken on board.

People like Kate and William (absent the title) — college-educated, upper-middle-class strivers — are not the ones who need reminding about the importance of marriage. Among the upper-middle class, marriage continues to be the norm. Among the lower-middle class though, marriage rates have collapsed.

This has created a cultural gulf between classes in America that affects every aspect of life, and arguably threatens the cohesion of America itself. This territory has been explored by Kay Hymowitz in her 2006 book, Marriage and Caste in America, as well as by scholars such as Sara McLanahan, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and David Popenoe, among others. Charles Murray’s forthcoming book, Coming Apart at the Seams, which he previewed in a recent lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, examines marriage as one of four key virtues that conduce to a healthy polity (the others are industriousness, piety, and honesty).

Echoing George Gilder, Murray notes that marriage is crucial because it “civilizes men.” Married men don’t just earn more and have significantly lower rates of criminality, substance abuse, depression, and poor health than single men. They also contribute more social capital to society. Married men are far more likely to coach little league, volunteer at church, and shovel their elderly neighbor’s walk. Married people, far more than singles (there are exceptions of course), take responsibility not just for themselves and their children, but for the community.

Anyway, it made me realize also that I haven't directed you over to my lovely wife's blog for all of the pictures she posted from last weekend's open house in Irvine, as well as our wedding and reception in Utah. Open house here. Wedding pictures outside the temple here. Reception pictures here.

And with that, I send you off this weekend with the little ditty that I've been grooving to the last few days:

Have a great one, y'all.

Thoughts on Marriage...so far

Everyone's first question when they see us these days is, "how's married life?" Now that we're past our first month, the Chris and Amy Marriage tour is over with, and we're more or less settled into our place, there's not a whole to say to most people.

Marriage is great. Great great great. My wife is as sweet as can be. We have lots of down time now, which is actually kind of weird. Even before we got engaged it always felt like our weeks were packed, and we always had plans, but these days it seems like we have a lot of evenings where we're just kind of hanging out.

Being married has alerted me to a few things:

• After several years of not having a room-roommate, I'm being reminded that I'm a pretty active sleeper. Dave has lots of stories about things I would say and do in my sleep. Last night before going to bed, Amy asked me, "so do you remember at all sitting straight up in middle of the night and saying, 'do I need to make some hot chocolate??? It is freezing in here!'" That is pretty much par for the course for me. I guess I used to laugh in my sleep a lot. I'm sure there will be lots more of those kind of stories.
• Marriage has an interesting way of really forcing you outside of yourself. When you're single, and even when you're dating, it's easy to just do your own thing. Now that I'm married, if Amy starts making dinner or doing our laundry - and I realize that she's flitting about doing stuff for us while I'm just watching ESPN or dinking around on the internet for me - then I feel dumb. I still have a ways to go in this department, but I just hope she's not feeling like she's alone.
• It's really fun trying to establish our marriage/family habits. It's nice to read scriptures, pray, have family home evening, and go to the temple together. As we're getting better at carrying these things out, it really does help me to feel closer to Amy. It's funny that at the same time, even though I recognize all of the benefits, sometimes it still feels like a chore. I've got such a stubborn natural man.

That's all I've got. We hit our one month mark just over a week ago, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll make it to two, but I think we're on our way.

And Then There Were None

Hi, blogging. I haven't see you for a little while....here we go. Let's do a week in review:

• I went to see Unwritten Law in concert last weekend when my sweet wife gave me the concert tickets as a present. You would think that I would outgrow these punk shows at some point, but I still just love them. The one thing, however, that I will never really like is how much amplification there is with the music. It should be loud enough to hear it, but not so much that it destroys your hearing, right? I was reading Jay Nordlinger this morning and he was ranting about that, and that guy reviews classical music. What would he think at a rock concert? Anyway, they were fun. Whenever I come back from a show I always say that music was meant to be heard live, and this time it's no different. They played a good smattering of songs from all of their albums except for Oz Factor, which really breaks my heart. My favorite song of theirs live continues to be Rescue Me. I never even liked that song so much when I heard it on the album, but something about hearing that one live that I just LOVE. They came out for an encore and did a cover of this song. I dug it. And now you can get a taste of it (at least of the original song) here:
  
  
• The Chris and Amy tour finally wrapped up this past weekend with our final stop in California. When we came back from Vancouver I was not interested at all to go to California, but as it got closer I got really excited for it. Mostly because we'd get to visit with a few people, and I was really looking forward to hanging out with Los Reids. I just love love love those people. And a special shout out for Laura and Matt, which brings me to my next point...
• It kind of amazes me the bonds that we formed with our friends from freshmen year. I'm still close to several friends from that time period, and my friendship with Laura has always remained strong, regardless of how little we see of each other. She has an awesome husband in Matt, and I am always excited as can be to see the both of them. I didn't mention this to Amy, but I'm desperate to meet up with them in Arizona for Spring Training one year. It's also funny that I'm now related to two people from that freshmen year.
• We had kind of an adventure coming home. It rained in spots during the trip, but there was one 300 foot stretch of highway where rain turned to pretty heavy slush, causing our car to hydroplane in a couple of spots. In that area we saw at least 5 cars either spun off the side of the highway or completely overturned with the top portion of the cabin smashed in. Then I realized I forgot my backpack when I asked Amy to look for my scrips, meaning that I did not have my keys, including keys to our apartment. That led to our first break-in as a married couple. That one will get its own post later. Then the next morning Amy looked out at her car from our kitchen window to see that the rear passenger window was shattered. I've never had such an eventful ride back.
• It was Black Sunday last weekend as far as our sports teams are concerned. Lakers lost. Angels swept by the city I hate most. Canucks lost. Ducks were eliminated. Bad day. The world was angry my day, my friends.
• Amy's birthday celebrations continue tonight at Jump On It. I'm sure pics will follow.

I have some other posts a brewing, but I just thought I'd spill all that out for yas.

Time Is Love

We had a really great stake conference over the weekend. The area 70 who spoke at the session on Saturday was especially good. I had a bunch of notes and things that I had written down from his talk, but the thing that stuck out the most to me was his comments about spending time with one another, and he said exactly, "time is love."

Then he shared this poem by Elrod Leany:

One day when Bruce was just a lad, first starting out in school,

He came into my workshop and climbed upon a stool.

I saw him as he entered but I hadn't time to play.

So I merely nodded to him and said, "Don't get in the way."

He sat awhile just thinking.... As quiet as could be,

Then carefully he got down and came and stood by me.

He said, "Old Shep, he never works and he has lots of fun.

He runs around the meadows and barks up at the sun.

"He chases after rabbits and always scares the cats

He likes to chew on old shoes and sometimes mother's hats.

But when we're tired of running and we're sitting on a log,

I sometimes get to thinking. . . 'I wish my daddy was a dog.'

" 'Cause then when I came home from school you'd run and lick my hand

And then we'd jump and holler and tumble in the sand

And then I'd be as happy as a little boy could be

If we could play the whole day through--just my dad and me.

"Now I know you have to work real hard to buy us food and clothes.

And you need to get the girls those fancy ribbons and bows.

But sometimes when I'm lonesome I think t'would be lots of fun,

If my daddy was a dog, and all his work was done."

Now when he'd finished speaking, he looked so lonely there,

I reached my hand out to him and ruffled up his hair.

And as I turned my head aside to brush away a tear,

I thought how nice it was to have my son so near.

I know the Lord didn't mean for man to toil his whole life through,

"Come on, my son I'm sure I have some time for you."

You should have seen the joy and sunlight in his eye,

As we went outside to play - just my son and I.

Now, as the years have swiftly flown and youth has slipped away,

I've tried always to remember to leave some time to play.

When I pause to reminisce and think of joys and strife,

I carefully turn the pages of this wanderer's book of life.

I find the richest entry recorded in that daily log,

Is the day that small boy whispered, "I wish my daddy was a dog."

The poem is sweet, but his delivery was so good and it worked so perfectly with that part of his message.

Lately things for Amy and I have been very relaxed as compared to how it all was just before the wedding, hectic. If anything, there is an abundance of love in our home because we've been able to spend so much time together lately. At certain spots it has felt a little slow, but I'm trying to savor it as much as possible because I'm sure it will be a short season before life speeds up again.

A couple weeks ago someone in my department at the Church Office Building recently retired, and his wife was remarking that it was the first time since he left to work for the Church that she felt like she had him back again. That was 33 years ago.

It's just kind of interesting to me the natural ebb and flow of life. That's all.

Judge Walker Confirms He's Gay

Some interesting news came out last week - Judge Walker, whose ruling in Prop 8 overturned the constitutional amendment in California confirmed that he was gay. News outlets report that he had been in a relationship for the last ten years.

This article by Ed Whelan found in NRO helps explains some of the reasons for the need to vacate his ruling. This blog post in the SF Chronicle by John Eastman, former dean of Chapman Law School, further elucidates the point. This online article by Whelan explains the gross misconduct by Judge Walker throughout the case.

Read, and pass it on.

Happy Birthday to, well, Me!

I just love people. I woke up last night to a text at 2am from my best friend starting the birthday well wishes. I came to my email this morning to another onslaught of emails from Facebook friends with more well wishes. The best part of this morning so far was the phone call from Ryan Reid wishing me a happy birthday. I just love these people.

Allow me to point out a things on my day:

• April 15th is the 105 day of the year. And on this date in:
  
• 1755 - Publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language.
• 1783 - Preliminary articles of peace ending the Revolutionary War are ratified.
• 1802 - William Wordsworth (is there a better name for a poet?) sees a long belt of daffodils which inspires him to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. I loved that one when I first came across it in high school.
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln dies without regaining consciousness.
• 1912 - The Titanic sinks at 2:20am after hitting an iceberg two and half hours before. I've seen this one placed on April 14th, but I'm perfectly happy to claim it as my own.
• 1923 - Insulin becomes available.
• 1947 - Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black man to cross the color barrier in professional sports in the United States.
• 1955 - McDonald's own Ray Kroc opens the first franchise in Des Moines, Illinois.
• 1957 - Not sure how this made the list, but I'm including it for my Vancouver readers, White Rock separates from Surrey and becomes incorporated as its own city.
• 1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opens. I had no idea it went that far back.
• 1989 - The Tiananmen Square protests begin.

Pretty cool though, right? Lots of very significant dates, especially bad ones. I guess it's debatable whether my entrance into this world marks one of the good or bad ones. But if it's bad, at least it is monumentally bad. I don't want to be half-hearted about it, one way or the other. If it's going to be bad, may as well be extremely bad, right?

Famous people born on my special day:

• 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance polymath (d. 1519)
  
• 1843 – Henry James, American author (d. 1916)
  
• 1858 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist (d. 1917) Only significant to me because of my background in the social sciences. This guy is a pretty big deal for us.
  
• 1912 – Kim Il-sung, President of North Korea (d. 1994) Bad guy.
  
• 1916 – Alfred S. Bloomingdale, American businessman (d. 1982) Kinda interesting. At least you know his name.
  
• 1982 – Seth Rogen, Canadian actor and writer. I find him funny.
  
• 1990 – Emma Watson, English actress. Hermione!
  

Those are just a few that I recognized and I thought were interesting. I may have also gone to the Wikipedia page and added my name. I wonder how long that will stay up.

It's also tax day here in the US. Naturally, I've read a number of things about how to approach tax day in the United States, chief among them being, "if you're getting a refund back from the US Treasury then you're giving the government free money!" It sounds nice, but most of the time people are only loaning the government an insignificant amount of money, even if it's a few thousand dollars. That kind of thinking ignores the psychology that goes into money and giving too much weight to purely economic considerations.

I finally got a number to back me up...if you're receiving $3,000 in refunds after tax day, that would have allowed you to earn $2.50 a month. We all agree that the $3,000 you receive as a windfall come April is much more welcome than getting that doled out through the year, right? I know for me I spend that money much more wisely if I get it in a lump sum like that than I would have if it got spread out, so essentially you pay for the government to save that money for you. That money gets put toward better uses, paying off debts, contributes toward a big purchase, then ultimately, savings and such. Just saying.

There was a time when I wanted a lot of recognition on my birthday. One time in high school I felt especially put out, but I think BYU reduced my expectations for my birthday when it just so happened that I would always be writing final papers and such because of its timing during the semester. Fortunately I had good friends who always did a lot of work to make my day a good one (at least when all the school work had passed). There were multiple years when I had stayed up the whole night writing papers the night before my birthday. Not so cool.

Now I'm pretty much satisfied with any sort of acknowledgment, if only wall posts on FB, but of course presents are always welcome. I'm not that noble.

Here's the poem that owes its birth to this day:

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

And here's a song to remind you of me and to kick off your weekend:


I had a different song up before, but I finally figured out what this song was called. This is my joint!

Around the World

I started subscribing to the National Geographic Travel blog a week or so ago and now it's one of my favorite reads each day. There are so many cool things happening all over the world, and they get a pretty good run down on a lot of those things, but, of course, being National Geographic, it also means that there are some really cool pics.

Anyway, they included this quote by Mark Twain today:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

One of today's posts had a link to another site where another guy documented some of the extreme things he did in New Zealand. The guy posted this video of his experience riding on the world's largest swing:

If you can understand what they're saying, the swing operators are pretty funny. It'd be fun to do that and just mess with people, if a little harsh in their language, but what would you expect from guys like that? Or is that an unfair characterization? (Here is the original post.)

Also, the person who writes the Nat'l Geo blog is hosting one of the sessions for Meet, Plan, Go. People are gathering in more than a dozen different cities to discuss how to go about taking significant amounts of time off to travel the world. The author himself (herself?) took off a year with his family - including two kids - to travel the world. Cool, right? These meetings will all be happening concurrently on October 18th. The closest one to here will be in Las Vegas, but there is one in LA.

...when are we going to Europe?

I Love the 80s

So I've been listening to this 80s playlist on Grooveshark and decided that I would try and improve on it. Am I the only idiot who removes certain songs because they were actually early 90s, but not 80s? That I would even bother to look up some of these songs to make sure they were 80s indicates that I'm a moron. Some of them I just threw in because I liked them enough. I know the difference between 80s and 90s Madonna, thankyouverymuch, but I felt like Cherish just had to get thrown in there. So sue me. I can distinguish the 80s-90s border pretty well, but the 70s-80s one is pretty darn tricky.

In any case, give it a try here. Let me know if I've missed any, or what your favorites are.

And if you just don't like 80s music, well, I don't think I want to know you then.

Did you know?

Did you know it's National African-American Women's Fitness/Alcohol Awareness/Cancer Control/Car Care/National Card and Letter Writing/National Child Abuse Prevention/Confederate History/Couple Appreciation/International Customer Loyalty/National Decorating/National Donate Life/Emotional Overeating Awareness/Fresh Florida Tomato/Grange/Holy Humor/National Humor/Informed Woman/Jazz Appreciation/National Kite Month/National Knuckles Down/National Landscape Architecture/

Month of the Young Child/National Occupational Therapy Month/National Pecan Month/National Pet First Aid Awareness/Pharmacists War on Diabetes/Physical Wellness/National Poetry/Prevention of Animal Cruelty/Rosacea Awareness/

School Library Media Month/National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention/National

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) Education and Awareness/Soyfoods/Straw Hat/Stress Awareness/International Twit Award/Women's Eye Health and Safety/Workplace Conflict Awareness/World Habitat Awareness/National Youth Sports Safety Month?

Seriously.

So celebrate by working out with your favorite female African-American/abstaining from alcohol/eating more antioxidants/writing a card or letter/not visiting your creepy 55 year old single uncle/setting our your General Lee bust on your lawn/sending flowers to your favorite couple/buying your favorite product/decorating your home/donating to pro-life campaigns/putting down that gallon of ice cream/eating a Florida fresh tomato/working on your personal garden/telling a religious joke/telling any joke/enlightening a woman/listening to Duke Ellington/flying a kite/playing a game of marbles/redesigning your front yard/babysitting/helping a stroke victim learning to walk/having pecan pie/putting a bandage on a kitty/not eating so much fatty food/going out for a run/being gentle with your skin/visiting your local library/not allowing your sorority sister to go home with that creechy guy from alpha beta omega/having safe sex/having Silk with your cereal/wearing a straw hat/meditating and breathing deeply/celebrating your favorite twit/not poking girls in the eye/mediating problems in the workplace/visiting a zoo and reading National Geographic/encouraging your local high school to wear safer football helmets!

Please appreciate the effort I put into doing that for you. Please. Sorry that I didn't bother to link something to every day. I just chose some random ones. But you can look it up. April really is the month for all of those.

On a related note, tomorrow is Obsura Day. The day is about celebrating the world's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica. 109 cities are participating and there is a whole range of events and activities available tomorrow. There aren't any around Utah, unfortunately, but LA has several and so does Vancouver. Click on the link above to find out if your city has any special events. The best part? A lot of them are free. Some examples include:

You can descend into the catacombs below Naples, Italy with an art historian; tour Mary's Gone Wild Folk Art & Baby Doll Museum in Supply, North Carolina; experience the powerful Saltsraumen Maestrom near Bodo, Norway; visit Tesla's laboratory on Long Island with GOOD editor Ben Jervey; sneak around the Haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado; go behind the scenes of the Cycladic Museum in Athens, Greece; poke around in the World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things in Lucas, Kansas; check out the birthplace of the Internet in Los Angeles with Matt Novak of PaleoFuture blog; pass through secret doors on a treasure hunt at the Mansion on O St. in Washington, DC. And much, much, much, MUCH more.

HT to the National Geographic Travel blog. They have some really awesome posts on there. Check it out.

Menace To Society

I never thought that it would take me this long to get married. My mission president didn't have any specific counsel about marriage - just do it in the right place, at the right time, by the right authority was all that he really said. I didn't envision myself getting married young, but not when I turned 30 either. I thought around 25 or so it would happen. Maybe 24.

When I got home from the mission things moved pretty comfortably in that area of my life. I started dating a girl not long after I got home from the mission. We dated for close to a year before things fizzled. Then I met another girl and we started dating not long after that. That one last for the longest time. I've revisited that one a few times on this blog, but from start to messy finish, that one took several years to unfold.

In the midst of that time one of the high councilors in my stake would always give me a hard time about not being married, except it wasn't in the joking, everything is going to work out kind of way. It was in the good-natured, but poorly delivered, "you're a good guy, how come you're not married" kind of way.

One time he started asking me about it and it couldn't have been worse timing. Things had just gone sour (again) with the girl I had been dating, and he actually said something to the effect of, "well you're friend just got married, you should follow his example. Don't you want to get married?" It just about destroyed me at the time, so I told him in my most earnest and pain-filled voice, "Of course I want to get married, do you think that I'm avoiding it? Do you think that it's not something that I'm conscious of every minute of every day?"

I think what bothered me about this well-intended brother was that I felt like he had a pretty good feeling for who I was as a person. He knows about my level of Church involvement and activity. He had seen me serving quite extensively in the Church, and I guess I just felt like he should know that I get it: I'm a return missionary without any obvious hindrances toward marriage, so I should be actively pursuing it.

I felt like I was, but it was hard to be constantly reminded that I was coming up short in an area of my life of which that I was actually very incredibly aware.

Sometimes I have a problem with the way people in the Church approach the topic of the young single unmarried adults. There was a lot of reference to it at this last General Conference, and even in my last stake conference it was a topic that was broached repeatedly. I (generally) don't like the allocation of blame allotted to the men because for every young male in the Church who avoids marriage because he is a man-boy and afraid of taking on that responsibility, there is also a similarly afflicted female version of that person.

I guess I don't like it because it's an over-simplification of what the overarching problem is, that there is a cultural shift in the marriage and relationship dynamic in the world which bleeds over into Church members. Unfortunately, the people of the Church are not unperturbed by the social mores and so as the world goes, sometimes we also follow.

I don't have much more insight into this subject other than those thoughts. All I can say now is that being on this side of it, I'm grateful for how things worked out. I don't know that I'm better or worse off getting married now as compared to when I originally thought that I would, but I'm happy things worked out the way that they did. I feel like I'm with the person who best complements me, and every miniscule thing that happens in our new lives feels like a confirmation from heaven that now was the right time, the right place, and the right person with whom to get married. I feel like I can say along with Elder Holland, "some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come." My path didn't allow for me to get married until this point, and I'm glad for it. For some people it comes right when you're 22 and for others it comes perhaps much later in life, but it always arrives when we put our faith in the Lord.

I'm just grateful that He is in charge and that I am not. My blueprints for success are much messier than His.

Another Conference Weekend

Aren't those always so good? Admittedly, I struggled through much of Saturday's sessions. Still getting used to this sleeping next to someone else thing. Our temperatures are all off. I did really appreciate Priesthood session though, and I was quite alert for Sunday. Something really funny about conference: A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day - Married By October. And then this follow up to that website.

Amy's dad made the comment to me when they Skype'd us on Sunday that I was probably breathing a sigh of relief. I was. It's nice to be on this side of the (wedding) veil. Although I do have some opinions about that, but that's for another day.

A few other things:

• The I Don't Care Bears of the Yahoo Fantasy Basketball league went undefeated this season en route to the championship. I don't know if you still come around here Jake, but in your face! When I come back next season I'll be better than ever. My guys went 104-36-4 over the season and won in the championship 6-3 over Justa Movin' and Shakin'. Those fantasy leagues are loads of fun and a nice distraction. On a related note...
• I hopped in with another friend into his baseball fantasy league. I haven't done baseball in several years because there are just so many games, but I'm looking forward to this one. The managers are more active, so it's just a bit more interactive. On another related note...
• Amy narrowly edged me out of our NCAA tournament bracket when UConn made the final. I wonder if this is the first time ever that everyone's tournament brackets were decided before the Final Four because NO ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD could have guessed those teams. I think I heard on ESPN that two brackets, out of tens of millions, predicted that Final Four. 2.
• The funniest part about losing that bracket, though, was when I asked if I could polish off the chocolate milk and Amy made me say, "You know more about sports than I do." Funny girl.
• And what a game last night, right? More like dud.
• We got a buffet last night and put it all together. Have no idea what a buffet is when it's NOT referring to food? This is what we got. We just love it. It's going to look awesome with that painting hanging above it. I didn't feel like putting it together last night, but Amy prodded and I'm glad that we did. It looks great and it was actually a lot of fun getting that all set up.
• Finally got back into running last Friday after three weeks off. Previous to the wedding extravaganza I had several good weeks of running. I had gotten up to about 9 miles on my long runs, with about 4-5 runs each week. Then absolutely nothing. It killed me running over the weekend. I developed a huge blister and my legs are still pretty sore. The problem with all this is that I'm supposed to run a half marathon at the end of the month so I'm going to have to build my mileage pretty quickly. I also realized recently that I'm really planning on running the Deseret News in July, I should be starting on my training anyway. Yikes. And so running season begins...
• I still love it though. I had been developing some aches and the lay-off was helpful, I think. I've got muscle soreness now, but no joint or arch pain which I think is more important in the long run (yep).

That's all I've got for now. Have a good one, y'all!