much to say.

this post will be scatterbrained, as I am so myself (not that you didn't all know that). Where to start?

my sister's demon of a dog has bolted loose two times and taken off running through the forest. unfortunately, when this happens there is nothing we can do about it but hope he gets hit by a car and we don't ever have to deal with him again (kidding! kind of). the first incident involved him taking my nephew's feet out from under him, and knocking the poor boy on his ass as he was trying to open the door to go out to play in the sand. the door hit the rugrat in the face as it shut, which made me pause to see if he were ok, and thus gave the dog time to bolt thoroughly from the yard. he eventually came back on his own, with his paws torn up from running so far.

KTG arrived successfully Sunday evening and has just left to head back to the Chi already. her visit was successful, as we did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all day yesterday. Literally, we sat out on the dock napping and half reading for hours and then watched tv and ate a whole lot.

This morning I got up and ran the local 5k, which was supposed to be part of my lactate threshold workout. I was slow, people. that's all there is to say about that. like, slower than half marathon pace slow. well, that would be true if the course were measured accurately, but I have my doubts (I know that sounds like me being a poor sport for running a slow time, but literally, I strapped on the Garmin and ran the first mile two times, and both times it was between .05-.06 miles over when I got to the mile marker. My last 1.1 mile split was faster than both my mile 1 split and my mile 2 split (granted, mile 2 was about 3/4 uphill). I have my doubts. but whatever. I did a mile before, the 5k at a "fast" pace, and then 4 miles to get my 8 total in. so that's the running for the day.

when I got home, KTG and I had a quick lunch and then made the short drive to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore and did the dune climb to Lake Michigan. it's 3.5 miles round trip, which doesn't seem long, but it's a rigorous climb there and back. After having an entire conversation about how immodest my sister is most of the time on the way there, we had no qualms about stripping off our clothes and jumping into Lake Michigan for a dip when we reached the halfway point on the hike. The water was so, so blue and beautiful, and with the Manitou Islands in the background, it was just too beautiful to pass up going in for a dip. we splashed around in the water for 20 minutes or so and then took some time to dry off before making the hike back. the whole trip to the lake and back (including our wave diving session) took about 2.5 hours. We headed home and had ribs waiting for us, courtesy of my dad, before KTG packed up and headed back.

unfortunately, we received a frightening phone call right before supper. my uncle, my father's only brother, evidently has had a stroke and is in the hospital. he's quite young (46 or so) and is relatively healthy, so this is quite alarming. From what my aunt said, he is doing much better, and his speech has improved to the point where they can't tell that anything was wrong before, but they want to keep him to do tests to make sure there isn't any extensive damage. he, of course, wants to leave because he has better things to do than sit around the hospital. men are so frustrating some times. :) my uncle and my dad are quite close, despite being almost furthest apart in age, so this is quite difficult. if you have good thoughts to send, we'll take them.