Once again...the pheonix...

Hello there one and all…

Wow…how quickly time flies, eh? I mean, it’s nearing a month since I last wrote anything in this blog and it seems like maybe a week or two…tops. I know I frequently just write what all has been going on in my life, while other times I write something that is more of a talking point type issue…well, this is going to just be a personal update type as I don’t have time really to come up with something really cool to talk about…so, I’ll talk about my last month instead!

Smokey, Rook and I, as well as 3 people from work, ran in the Governor’s Cup which benefitted the program that gives insurance to needy children. It was a really cool and windy day (43 degrees at race start and the winds were out of the NNW at about 15-20MPH gusts). The race starts out kinda flat and you think to yourself, “Wow…this isn’t that bad!” and then you turn the corner and run up the hill near the cathedral and you curse yourself and the stupidity that is your conscience at even THINKING you can run this stupid race, let alone make it up the hill without having some sort of coronary event. Well, that wasn’t the worst hill either…after 2.6 miles of run run run run run…you run down hill for a bit and think “YAY!” only to turn another corner where there is a gradual hill that lasts about 2 blocks. At that point of the race, all I could think to myself was “Don’t vomit…please.” We all finished the race (nowhere near record times, mind you) and then walked home.

I signed myself up for my first triathlon next month. Am I scared? Yes. Am I nervous? Oh yes. Am I out of my mind? You better believe it! The event will be a total of 15.7 miles of fun (a .6 mile swim followed by a 12 mile bike ride and then a 3.1 mile run). Any one of the three parts, I think, are going to be hard enough…you put the three together and we’re talking “Ouch-City.” The mindless thing about this whole deal is that the planners put this on a Sunday rather than a Saturday…so I may have to take off work on Monday just to recover (assuming I can walk to pick up the phone to call in).

On June 11^th, it snowed in Helena. I’m not talking just a light dusting (well, ok…in the city it was just a dusting that quickly melted off), but in the mountains, there were up to 17” of the cold wet stuff dumped in about a 24 hour period. LOTS of snow. (Pictures of said snow can be found here: http://latech.googlepages.com/snowjune11th ). Today, it reached 80.

I also paid off my truck! Yay!!! So, after a long time of paying for something, I actually OWN my truck instead of the bank owning it. That was a great feeling. I actually woke up 2 days later thinking that I needed to call and make sure because there may have been a time differential and I could have accrued another $.03 in interest in the two days it took for the online payment to clear, but I called and everything was fine.

I’m working on changing some things in “Scott-Land”. Not only have I changed what and how I eat, what I do in my free time, and how much I exercise, but I’m also starting to work on myself as a person…not the physical stuff, mind you, but the core of what makes Scott who he is. I’m working on being assertive. I’m working on being decisive. I’m working on taking control of my life. I’m working on a bunch of things…but it all seems to be boiling down to self-esteem. That’s the key…fix that, and you fix many things. As a result, or as a push to get myself out of my comfort zone and at the suggestion of one of my good friends, I asked a total stranger out to dinner. Ok, ok…she’s not a total stranger…but we hadn’t really spoken before. We’ll see how that goes.

Well, that’s really all that I can think of. Hope you are all doing well.