An embarrassing turn for Queen "I run in a mountain town in a route of only hills no problem what is this hill hard to you I didn't notice" me yesterday. I had to shift up my route around a funeral and kicked my own ass so bad on a steep two mile different route run that I'm actually sore today. Two miles. Sore. Ridiculous. I think I need to be doing that route more often if this is how much it tore me up. Also, I need this training at work to finish up so I can run my usual mileage again and not get fat. 

It's a pretty night though. The sky was all smoke and blue and pink and golden, and the lingering snow made it reflect and filter through the tall evergreens in the graveyard, like their very individual needles had little halos of light around them. Work is still hard and annoying, but I feel compartmentalized about it. I feel like my personality has returned a little bit from my difficulties last week; I feel funny again, at least, which is the only quality I ever valued in myself besides my fabulous tits. 

Here's another nice thing I actually did for myself: I bought myself a very pretty turquoise ring from some little artist who does work with stones and crystals and shit. I know turquoise is a little silly, but this one is the exact same color as pale, cool teal-green moss on dead hemlock wood, shot through with veins of darker brown. It reminds me of reindeer lichen and places I love to hike, and the design is banded with silver in such a way that it looks like a natural mate to the silver viking replica ring I've worn since I was sixteen. It makes me happy, and fits my natural inclination to fidget around with something. 

I told Ali about my dream and she sent me an NPR podcast about dreams, which is peak her: listening to me describe a complex, complicated emotion I believe to be mostly expressed through mystical signs, while also trying to make me listen to NPR when I don't want to. I've also had my head in Nithavellir a little bit, playing with my stupid story when I should be doing productive things. 

Speaking of productive things, a friend wants to hire me to write for his new brewery venture thing... beer descriptions, website content, the works. I had a zoom about it Tuesday night. On one hand, I'm not NOT seeing the writing on the wall at my current gig. It would be good for me to have some resume experience that isn't specific to Saas learning software if I ever wanted to freelance or do another type of writing. On the other hand, I don't know how relevant brewery copy is going to be for any future software writing job, I'm not a marketing person, and I don't really want to. I know all I do all day is sit at home and go for one run and think about crows and drink prosecco, but ehhhh. The friend is nice and I like him, but I don't really know him well enough to feel like I know if I could work with him on a project like this. Also, I'm an emotionally tender victorian level depressed person who spend a lot of time staring out of windows right now; maybe I should just stick to my lucrative day job. 

...On the other, other hand, with an extra 500 bucks, I could buy a fucking metal detector, and really complete my full transformation into middle aged dad.

What else was I gonna say? Oh yeah. More snow maybe, that's kind of cool. I hope it's making the people who love snow happy. A camp that I'm in too, but I'm lucky in that I get to stay home all the time and write about Motsognir towers and shit and never go out. It can be fun because I don't have to go out in it. But it will be beautiful. I like the time of year that it's developing into, where it's still seasonally cold, but there's more light and my brain doesn't so much feel like it's trying to jump out of my head. If it snows, on Saturday morning, I'll walk down in it to the little french bakery and buy croissants stuffed with ham and mustard and little rosemary needles on top.