American Buddhist Perspectives
Sometimes I don’t know how people with real jobs or those little things called children do it. I’m exhausted. And all I did today was really not all that much (though there is that voice in my head that reassures me, yes, you did a lot.).
On what felt like my first day off in over a week, my biggest accomplishment today comes down to carpet space. That’s right, carpet space. This morning I had little to none, now I have a lot. What that translates to is a lot of cleaning and putting things away as I move in to my new abode.
I also made more arrangements for my trip to China in less than two months! I’m very excited about that. I’ve ‘met’ some of the other participants in the program and they all look brilliant and worldly and amply capable of teaching me many great things. Then I spent some time scoping out this weekend’s camping extravaganza with Julie, Dani and Marga. All good things there, good weather, great people, Montana to provide the scenery – can’t wait.
And tonight, as I felt plum exhausted from all of the internet ‘work’ (and cleaning, which involved putting about 80 pounds of books in the attic), I went on my first run since the big Helena trail run. It was a meager 2.5 miles, but a nice gentle way to break my body back into running… and there was a glorious sunset to be seen, so I rushed home, grabbed my camera, and rushed off to a spot just blocks from my new place to shoot some photos.
With all of that, some shopping, and a bit of apartment hunting for Julie, I’m ready to call it a night. But first, some photos:
An interesting bit of ‘moving in’ stuff. This is the name tag for the mailbox. Blake and I created a new one with just our names and the postal employee wrote “thank you!” on it.
Tonight’s sunset. Glorious. That makes 4 days in a row. I’m looking forward to many more. I took this from near the “river trail” where people were literally stopping in their tracks as they looked up at it. Others were overheard talking about how this is what makes Montana so great and why Minnesota (apparently their previous home) never looked like this.
Silhouette of yours truly (and my trusty Sigg bottle) in tonight’s sunset.
Tuesday night’s sunset.
An American Robin hanging out. One thing that I’ve noticed a lot lately between my runs and sunset photography has been the birds. On my morning runs near Julie’s the Killdeer (a black and white striped bird with long legs) was always nearby. Tonight a male Mallard flew so close to me that I could hear three distinct notes in his wings: a deeper whisp as the wing went up, then almost a high-whistle with each down-push accompanied by a whisper of air.
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