Go, you chicken fat, go away!

The construction crew had already trenched through the intersection and patched it all up.  But now they had it barricaded again.  When I got there I saw that they were about to dig it up again.  I wonder what that's all about.  I ran over to the Floodway and headed north.  I decided to not do my normal 1 loop because I didn't want to have to deal with the construction, just in case.  So when I got to Brown, I turned east.  I ran to 48th St and headed back south.  Then, instead of going through the intersection, I ran around the block.  But before I did that I saw Sis. Sutherlin.  We waved at each other.  Sadly, they haven't been to church in at least a year.  I really enjoyed hearing their testimonies when they started coming back.  Anyway, I ran around and saw Br. Cox working in his yard.  I said, "Hi, John!"  I might have surprised him a bit.  Then I saw Sis. Sutherlin again as she was driving by and she waved again.

I woke up at 4am and started running at 5am.  Since it was so early, the construction crew hadn't arrived yet, and I decided to do 2 loops.  I've been playing Scrabble with Tracy and I know that I have an 8 letter word I can play (there are little hints you can use), but I haven't been able to figure it out.  There is a word strength meter that you can purchase.  There are 10 bars on the meter.  If you don't purchase it, it only shows your 4 of the bars.  So, for example, if with your letters the best move on the board is a 40 point point word, and you place a word that is 20 points on the board, the meter will go up to 5.  But if you haven't purchased it, you'll only see it go up to 4, so you don't really know if 20 points is the best word, or if there's a real high scoring bingo.  If you use all 7 letters on your rack, you get a bingo, which is a 50 point bonus.  So my trick is to put a word on the board somewhere that is worth 7 points.  If the word strength meter only goes up to one, I know there is a word on the board that is approximately 10 times higher than 7, which is more than likely a bingo.  There's another hint you can use if you have enough coins (diamonds actually) saved up.  This hint highlights every available tile on the board where you can put one of your letters to form a word.  So, I knew I had a bingo somewhere and I used the "binoculars" hint.  Since it was so late in the game, I could tell that the only place a bingo would fit was either on an L or an A.  Since I only had two vowels on my rack, I figured it was probably the A.  Scrabble is 70% math, 20% vocabulary, and 10% another word that I can't think of at the moment.  I usually win, but Tracy has beaten me more times that I'd like to admit.  I'm too competitive.  The letters were N U C L E R S and probably A.  So nuclear is a word, but not nuclears.  Unclear is a word, but not unclears.  As I was running I kept shuffling around the letters in my head. 

When I got to Brown I saw doberman lady again.  I was able to get through the fence before she did.  When I got half way between Brown and Adobe I thought of a couple of words I would like to try; secularn and reclanus.  Reclanus.  That's a good one.  I stopped and opened the Scrabble app.  But it was taking too long to load and I was afraid doberman lady and her dobermans would catch up to me.  So I exited out and continued running.  There were a lot of dog walkers out this early.  I didn't want to stop while I saw someone with a dog.  It wasn't until I was heading north again north of University that I finally stopped to try my words.  Neither of them worked.

Well, that was yesterday.  Today I finally gave up and hoped that I would get some better letters to make an obvious bingo.  Tracy has a slight lead that I won't be able to catch her unless I get a bingo.  But, as I said, it was late in the game, and I didn't realize there weren't any more letters left.  So she's going to win.  Anyway, the word was LUCRANES.  Now I will go crawl up in the fetal position and cry for a while.

We had an awesome lightning and thunder storm last night.  Around 2am there were some thunders instantaneous with the lightning.  It also rained most of the night.  Often times that makes me sleep soundly.  So after going back to sleep, I woke up 7am, which is kinda late for me nowadays. 

The rain was very light, so I decided to go running.  When I started running it looked like it might even start to clear up.  I wasn't even sure which route I would take today.  I ran straight through the intersection because the construction workers were in full swing.  I thought about cutting through the retention basin, but they have a large pipe connected to a fire hydrant that's laid all the way through the basin.  I didn't want to deal with that.  What if I tripped?  I couldn't handle the humiliation.  So heading north my next decision was whether to turn east or west when I got to Brown.  I could go east to Higley, south to Adobe, and back home.  That should be just over two miles.  But I don't like running on the main roads anymore.  I could go west, but the RWCD road is probably muddy.  Sometimes it's slick when it's muddy.  But I did want to see the Floodway and how much water was in it.  So west it was.  I ran over to the east side of the Canal which is the west side of the Floodway.  It wasn't bad as far as mud goes.  But now what?  How do I get back home.  My initial thought was to cut through the Floodway at the green belt like I did last week, but there was at least a foot of standing water in the Floodway.  I didn't want to go through the construction zone at Adobe and face my arch nemesis the large pipe.  So I had no choice but to run all the way to University, come back up the east side of the Floodway, and cut through the green belt into the neighborhood. 

Once I committed to that I remembered the dream I had last night.  I dreamt about Jeff, the hobo.  For some reason I had to get somewhere and the only way to get there was by crawling through a thicket and that's where Jeff lived.  I saw Jeff get up and leave, so I figured it was safe to go through, but as I was crawling through, I could see the shadow of another hobo under the brush.  I asked if it was all right that I pass by.  It was a weird and unrealistic dream, but still, it just felt weird that I might see Jeff after having dreamt about him.  When I got to University it started raining.  So, indeed it was not about to clear up.  It looked like Jeff was bundled up in his sleeping bag.  There was a palo verde tree near him that had been blown over.  Or struck by lightning?  Probably not.  I didn't see any burn marks, but I did take a picture.

It rained on me all the way home.  It was nice.  When I got home I was soaked, but I decided to get even more wet.  We're having our pool redone.  Yesterday, I think, the pool company came and put in the pebble tec.  Now the pool had about 8-inches of rainwater in it.  I wanted to be the first one to swim in the refurbished pool.  So I went down the steps and laid down in the water.  I couldn't swim.

To give closure to my previous blog entry, I ended up beating Tracy in that game.  She had some high scoring letters on her rack when I placed all my letters on the board.  The value of those letters get subtracted from her score and added to mine.  So it was like a 40 point swing and I ended up beating her by a couple of points.  Poor thing.  LOL.  Love you, Tracy.