Oh, L.A., you gave me so much.

First, I learned that the term “breast aug” is common. Doctors use it in commercials. Forget that it’s actual surgery, with actual anesthesia and actual risks. We need to save a few syllables to conserve commercial time. Also, the first 80 callers get a “free limo ride to and from surgery.” Oh, boy. Thank you for reminding me I’m happy with what I have.

Second, I can drive like a maniac. I try not to but sticking me in the middle of traffic like that and asking me to mind my manners might be like throwing me in a pool and asking me not to kick. Thank you for giving me my attitude back.

Third, I must always look like I didn’t pay a bit of attention to the outfit I assembled today although a) I totally agonized for hours and b) it costs more than a mortgage payment. Such a cliche, I know. Thank you for reminding me I’m cheap.

Forth, I got a cold late yesterday and therefore this post along with the comments I’ve been leaving on other sites all morning probably make little to no sense. I suppose saying “I never get sick” just sounds whiny and pathetic right now. Thanks for taking my brains, in less than four days.

Fifth, I got some sun. And wore flip flops in February. That made it all worth it.

The super secret mission? Accomplished!

I’m now sitting in weather around 70 degrees (F) and no where near the snow (sorry, Northerners). My morning run this morning consisted of hills and roads somewhere between the Verdugo and San Gabriel mountain ranges.

But let’s back up a little, shall we?

Last night I flew, slightly incognito, into LAX. Well, okay, not incognito because that’s actually what a lot of people at LAX do. I was more “hiding” from one person. Around 7:30 p.m. last night, I walked into the house of my sister’s in-laws and stood in front of my sister, who was somewhere between a heart attack and a one-woman parade when she saw me come in.

We’d been keeping the secret for weeks and since she is an occasional blog reader, well I couldn’t really mention it here, either. And I really really wanted to because keeping a surprise from her is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.

After she screamed, I screamed, we laughed (and, okay, cried a little too) we sat down to dinner. After all, surprises trump food but only for a little while.

And the nephew? He’s perfect, and huge and strong and adorable and hilarious. Expect billions upon billions of pictures to come!

Oh, and running here? At thousands of feet lower than home? Well that’s some darn good oxygen. Dare I say, hills are even easier.
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*That’s funny. I would love, of course, to go to New York but I would totally tell all of you because I WOULD BE SO DANG LOST THERE IT WOULDN’T EVEN BE FUNNY and therefore, I’d need all the help I could get.

Well, the concert was a blast. It was the most ridiculous amount of fun and music and dancing I’ve had in a while. I’m not really one to not enjoy a concert- I love the music from where ever I am and am a big believer in the cheap seats. However, after being in the thirteenth row last night, I highly recommend it. It’s almost like you forget about the 50,000 other people behind you. Almost.

And, I gotta say, I’m amazed by a sixty-one year old man that can pack an arena and rock out like that for over two hours, including two encores. That’s worth my zombie-like state today, of this I’m certain.

I made friends, though, with a lot of the crowd around me. My friend and I (she ten years older than me) were the only people in sight under 40. For this we received a lot of ridicule. When the lady to my left pulled out her Bob Seger ticket stub from 1977, Toledo, Ohio and the lady to our right showed us her tour t-shirt from Summer 1986, we were both asked what we were doing in those years. My, you should have seen the looks when I said “well, in ‘77 I had yet to be conceived and in the summer of ‘86, I was basking in the glow of Kindergarten graduation.”

They were seriously doubting I even knew how to spell Bob Seger, much less had any idea of what the music would be. I, of course, proved them wrong when three lines into Roll Me Away the lady to my left and I had one arm around one another and the other waving in the air together, singing along. Ah, the power of music!

Now I am more than sufficiently tired and, lo and behold, endlessly lucky because I’m taking off work early today on a SUPER secret mission. A mission so important and secret and confidential I can reveal not a detail. The only thing I can say is I’m not going to Katmandu. Not yet, anyway.

Would it be entirely cliche and annoying to say I don’t really believe in Valentine’s Day?

I do believe in love, though.

Like I said last year, I think the day is like any other and really ends up being what you make it. Whatever it may be. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

My “it” this Valentine’s Day?

Bob Seger.

And The Silver Bullet Band.

I ought to be sufficiently tired at work tomorrow, but it’s worth it. Yes, it’s Real Love.

Love somebody. Namely, yourself.

Last weekend the Front Range was finally graced with a couple days so sunny and beautiful, fifty degrees (F) began to make me actually believe that Summer might return this year. Instead of the Winter blues, I was doing some serious Summer dreamin‘. And not just the oh-I-feel-the-sun-on-my-face-how-wonderful kind of dreaming but also the oh-I-should-start-bringing-out-the-summer-clothes-and-(insert jumping up and down here) the-flip-flops-too kind of dreaming.

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One of the reasons I love warmer weather is because it gets me out. It relaxes me and allows me to appreciate everything around me more. It’s not that I don’t marvel at the beautiful place I get to live every day, but when I’m allowed to just sit and bask in it for a while, it makes me wonder why I ever pine for other places. Well, sort of anyway.

I feel like it’s a gift to not only have beauty around me but have the ability to appreciate it.

Sometimes, I look around me and think “how can I not be happy?”

While walking around on Sunday, recovering from a great eight miler on Saturday, looking at beautiful things, appreciating things larger and more stunning than I have words for, the thought came to me: I am one of the happiest people I know. Yes, I might be a huge dork for saying so on my blog, but the best part of being happy (as well as the best part of being a dork) is you don’t care. That’s how good it is.

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If that’s not enough, it feels peaceful too. It feels like I can walk down the street and smile at people and not even have a reason why. And so I do, and I like it. It feels natural where as times in the past, it’s been more difficult.

Who knows, it might just be a moment. A part of time when I get to take a look around, at the hills and rocks where I grew up and love it for everything I’ve always known it to be but also things I might never have seen before. It doesn’t effect me the same way other places do; it has no high and low tide, it has no shore. I make an excellent beach bum, there is no doubt.

But it does have it’s own rhythm and it’s own way of comforting me when I need it.

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That seems okay at times, too. With everything else life brings, the 99.99% of things you don’t write about on your blog, living in a place that actually feels good and feels like home is really the best comfort you could hope for.

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And if all else fails, I also have, quite possibly, the cutest dog on Earth. That also makes me pretty happy.

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*The photos (except that of the dog) were taken at Garden of the Gods, CO.

I try to spend as much time as I can with my young, full-of-questions, cousins. I used to think I could teach them but mostly, they teach me.

The older of the two, now nearly ten, and I tend to want to “research” and “discover” whenever we’re together. We go on little hikes and when we’re hanging out at home, we spend a lot of time on The Discovery Channel website. We’ve watched everything from stunts to emergency animal rescue and read articles on bridge engineering, crocodile breeding and the history of diamonds. I’m not kidding, we are professionals when it comes to finding information on the Internet.

Boy of nearly ten, though, seems to know something about everything. He knows what makes a suspension bridge stay, well, suspended. He knows that some female reptiles eat their mate (or at least try, or something like that). He knows the history of the Hope Diamond. Meanwhile, I usually sit next to him, staring at the screen stunned that there’s anything else even on the Internet beside blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube. What more do you really need? Really?

On our latest adventure, though, my lack of ten-year-old knowledge was redeemed. Well, almost. We were reading this article by Bill Nye (yes, “The Science Guy.” Do you know any other Bill Nye? Okay then.) about tides. Throughout the article, Bill explains the reason for tides, the sun, the moon, gravity and all. (Sidebar: I enjoy Bill especially because although he is THE science guy, he doesn’t get all crazy sciency all the time and talk over one’s head. It’s actually quite attractive and if Bill were say, younger, single and possibly living across the street from me, I might find some time to bring some cookies over. Super smart sciency non-cocky guy is the new hot, you know).

Anyway, in the middle of the article, Bill gets into explaining the way Earth rotates and how that causes tides, particularly high tides, to always be occurring somewhere. Here’s what Bill says: “As the saying goes, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Well, the ocean is bulging high-tide-wise somewhere all the time as well–and on opposite sides of Earth.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I say to my cousin. He agrees but has a strange look on his face. “What?” I ask, still not sure what he doesn’t get.

“I’ve never heard of that saying.”

“What? ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’?”

“Yeah. What does that mean?”

“It just means that somewhere on Earth, no matter what time it is in your time zone, it can be five o’clock somewhere else.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Would the math add up? Are there enough time zones for that to be possible.”

“Well, I really don’t know. But that’s not really the important part of that saying.”

“So what’s the important part?”

“Ask me again in ten years.”

“Ugh, I hate when you say that! I won’t remember in ten years to ask you what ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’ means.”

“Oh yes you will, trust me.”

Somewhere, sometime, who knows when, my sister and I have switched roles. She’s less often inclined to play the free-spirited adventurer role and I’m more inclined to seek experiences out. She used to be the one that would take risks while I’d be the one carefully calculating every move, lest I arrive somewhere five minutes late and end the very world as we know it.

I like to think, for the most part, we are equally there for each other on the advice front though. It’s nice to have that dependable, caring voice of reason. Then again, sometimes that voice of reason is less than reasonable (albeit never less caring).

“So you just sail, out on the water with nothing around you for days and days?”

“Yes, that’s partially the point.”

“But what if something happens? What if the boat tips over?”

“The boats don’t often ‘tip over.’ I mean, it could happen but they’re generally made to not tip over.”

“Well they have to rock back and forth to sail. They practically tip sideways, that’s how they go.”

“That is not how they go. They sail, with sails. And wind. It’s not like the ski boat out on the lake like when we were kids, you know?”

“Of course not. But what about sharks? Have you seen that movie where a boat leaves those people out in the ocean and they drown or get eaten by sharks and die?”

“No, I didn’t see that. But that was different, those people we diving and under water and… why am I even explaining this? It’s completely different.”

“What about whales? What if a whale jumps on the boat?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Whales are big.”

“When is the last time you picked up the paper and read about a boat sunken by an incredible jumping whale?”

“Alright, but I’m still skeptical.”

“Obviously.”

You have to admit, having someone who loves you enough to fear things that aren’t even possible, well that’s pretty special.