Thought I should do a quick update before life really starts to get busy!

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve started a new running/jogging regime in preparation for a 5K that I am doing on October 6, and last night, I hit the THREE MILES marker (which is just short of 5K). I have been gradually building my distance and after making the one mile marker a week or so ago, I thought it would take me an eternity to make it to three. Last week I ran two miles, and then last night, three (it helped that I was trying to recover from a weekend visit to Chris’s parents). So I was pretty stoked last night.

Also over the last few weeks, I have been interviewing with a nonprofit organization for a position, and today is my first day on the job (psst, I’m not blogging from work, I have a 12pm start today). I’ll post more after this week and let you in on how things are going. Needless to say, I am elated to be working for this organization.

This past weekend, Chris and I were in East Texas in part to visit his folks, but also to attend Chickfest in Pittsburg, TX. We were there as part of Kathy’s campaign to promote her candidacy for Congress. It was a great day, with loads of friendly faces stopping by. We felt really good that there was a need for change in the area, and Kathy is the person to make that happen.

More soon.

Marina @ Lake Travis, Austin

Originally uploaded by melbGuy

I went on a road trip with Chris today down to Lake Travis in Austin. I’m sitting here in the car park pilfering someone’s wireless internet connection looking at the image you can see here in this post. It’s a beautiful day in Austin.

Did I mention the shirtless boy who is wandering around with his dog? I wanted to post a pic of that

I’ve learned a very interesting thing about people recently, they love the taboo issues. I am not really surprised by this revelation, nor shocked by my realization of this well known fact. I think what fascinates me more is the trigger that made me more aware of this little piece of reality.

Let’s go back a week or so. I was sitting at home, and decided to research some groups on Facebook relating to naturism (or nudism). As happens when you find a group that you are interested in, you click on the “join this group” button, and then you look over the group, and see what other groups are related to this one. You visit the next one, you like, and you click on the “join this group” button … so on and so forth. As you add these groups to your Facebook profile, Facebooks reports these to your friends through mini-feeds.

It appears that my adding of these groups was the one thing that was not only noticed by my Facebook friends, they reacted. What surprised me by the activity that was generated from my group jumping and joining, was that I’ve done this before … only with other subject matter (e.g. gay groups, same-sex marriage groups, VT tragedy groups). Nothing has received the level of interest from my friends more than joining nudism groups.

So before I go on any further, let me say “I’m a naturist (nudist).” There it’s been said and blogged!
more…

Thanks to my good friend Layton, the lanai preparation has developed to an almost final stage. I have two things to show for the work that Layton and I did: (1) a semi-circle dirt area in my back yard; and (2) peeling skin. It seems that Layton doesn’t burn when standing around in the sun, but that same luxury is not extended to me. The good thing is that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (which kind of surprised me given the amount of time we were out there digging around).

The next stage is to dig out some channels towards the house to protect the foundation, and then start the brickwork (border). following that, we will be cementing the interior (in sections). The discussion over the color of the bricks, final concrete and the design of the sections is still ongoing.

As you would imagine, there is a downside to doing a project like this, and having dogs. This problem is made all that more challenging when it rains.