The Worst Joke Ever

First off, Happy Birthday to rozberk and seph_ebonblade. May there be lots of enormous paws covered in salt for the lot of you. :)

That being said, what happened to the Ides of March this year? Will there be a make-up date? It'd be really awesome to have an excuse to head up to KC and you know, get blasted with you guys!

Thanks for all the hahr compliments. :) I'm rather pleased with the way it turned out, even if I still have to get used to having longer hair. Sometimes I feel like there are garden snakes trying to eat my head.

Ran again today, and there was a noticeable difference in stamina. Legs and body took it just fine; no soreness or stiffness, everything was loose, warm, ready to go. There wasn't really even any fatigue when I was done! I only started to get really winded during the last leg, and I suspect that in a week or two that'll die down as well. At this point my body is saying "More, more, more!" but my lungs are saying "Not yet."

Held a Drawing Circle over at the Perk that was small but successful. stickypawz, [Bad username or site: <caleb_badger @ livejournal.com], aubrin, white_wolf and I all headed down, drew a bit (I wrote), downed a lot of coffee, and generally shot the breeze. It was good having the chance to talk to White for a bit; I hadn't seen too much of her since she's moved down. I worry that I might have been more crude/annoying than I meant to. The roasted bunny with the apple in its mouth might have been an indication towards that end. :)

I've been thinking a lot about my practice and exactly what I've come to believe. For some reason, I have trouble meditating every day even though I know there's a marked improvement in focus, patience and other stuff (can you tell I haven't meditated today?) when I do. I think it's still too easy to find ways out of it even after all this time, and the practice of doing things mindfully has bled out into every day life so oftentimes I don't feel the need to 'practice'. I'm sure I'm looking at it the wrong way, but there you go.

Anyway, in an effort to stick to a more Buddhist mindset (right now, I would consider myself more "Zennist" than anything), I'm going to be ruminating a bit over the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path a bit. It's interesting to me how much Buddhist thought can be traced back to these two tenets, but it really does make sense. I've found that an individual's view on karma can almost always be directly tied to how he interprets the First Truth ("Anguish is everywhere.").

But! I'm getting a ton of Zen books in at the Bookshop this afternoon, so I should start to make space for them. :)