So, I went to sleep and felt fine last night. Got to sleep at a reasonable hour, slept a good night’s sleep, and woke up with a blinding headache. Every time I sat up, the lights turned up, and I had to lie back down. It felt like someone had my head in a vise. Painful. Spent most of the morning in bed, then by afternoon, felt good enough to wander about the house. Went to a new chinese food place on Lakeshore, which ended up being more Panda Express-y than I’d have liked, but it was still actually reasonably ok. Almost regardless of quality, it’s nice to have another restaurant on Lakeshore.

Spent the rest of the day playing games, then in the evening, decided to do a bit of gardening, which I did for maybe 30 minutes, before I got frustrated it was so dark, and tired, from moving dirt. It’s strange, how satisfying the work is, though. Ended up digging up a huge cluster of bulbs that were just about to sprout, so that was really good – saved me some trouble in the future. Still trying to dig out a bunch of roots, but the process is just really slow. You’ve gotta dig around the perimeter, then start cutting the roots away until you work your way to the main “trunk,” which then requires either a sawzall or an axe to get through. Again, satisfying, but not necessarily easy or fun.

Something a friend of mine said on his blog reminded me of bits of my adolescence, and for some reason, one of the memories that bubbled up to the surface was going to Redwood Park, in high school, and mountain biking. Or rather, the weird thing is that it reminded me of a time I went to the park, and *didn’t* have my bike. I would walk the trails, but imagine I was on my bike – “brake here, pedal pedal pedal, left around this root cluster, wheelie, pop up the rear wheel. Pedal pedal, brake, right around the rut, left over the root, jump the small gap back to the right, pedal, brake turn hard right back off the seat, drop off, I’d probably have fallen there… pedal pedal, shift to an easier gear pedal UP wheel up over the root, shift weight forward, pop the rear wheel up, left into the rut, ride the rut whoa, that root would have surprised me, and over I go.” That sort of thing was really commonplace. Days after a ride, I could visualize every detail of it.

I’d do the same for swimming races – I was so familiar with certain pools, I could feel the texture of the walls against my feet, and know how careful I’d have to be when turning. I could see every detail of a hundred yards of breaststroke, when to breathe, when to kick, and pull, how far I’d be from the wall on my last stroke, where I’d surface from the pull-down… The whole thing. I don’t think I bother to do that at all for anything anymore.

Weird.