Jane appears on Facebook

So, I did it. I put my face in facebook. And I even found a friend. I uploaded my picture, I updated my profile, and I started a photo album. Thing is, not too many people I know do this stuff, so I'm kind of out there on my own. If I could get my 70 year old dad, or my 5 year old niece to get on board... now maybe that would be fun. The folks I want to keep in touch with don't really do this stuff. Anyway, like I said, I did find one friend... Debbie Adriance and I chatted for a while last week, and it's cool -- she uploaded a youtube video to her site, and I received a notification on my homepage when she did. Pretty neat.

I checked out the marketplace too... found a nice mountain bike. Thought about selling my spoon collection...

Flickr and Photo Sharing

on the peninsula
Originally uploaded by miss jane tabby

Here's a little photo of me that was taken on a trip to the Seven Lakes Basin on the Olympic Peninsula. What a great place! I caught my first trout on a fly during this trip. Maybe next time I'll post the picture of me with that tiny fish -- I look a lot like gollum in it.

I added a few tags to this picture as well: Jane, Lien, Olympic, Penninsula, Backpacking. Then I searched for my photo via "tag only" and... voila! I am available for all to locate and adore!

I have actually been using flickr for a while, but this assignment forced me to be a little more diligent about labelling and tagging.

And I'm back on my theme -- this post actually has something to do with one of my uphill/downhill pursuits!

Streaming Music

So... I tried out Pandora. Pretty cool. I created radio stations based on artists I like, and rated songs as well. I wonder -- does this mean that the radio station will never again play me the songs I don't like?

I was also able to retrieve information regarding bands I like, and had I been into it, I could have done a little social networking as well.

This is definitely something that I'd like to use personally - a great way to access music that suits me!

Instant messaging and rss feeds have nothing to do with running!

But I made this blog to track my progress with web 2.0 tools, so, there it is.

I spent a lovely 15 minutes IMing my colleagues at the Stanwood branch last week. We had a group chat, and successfully made all the other folks in the office jealous that we were having such a good time!

I have several means of tracking my rss feeds... I suppose I should have just one, but when there are so many options, why limit yourself? I use Bloglines, but I just started getting my feeds on my iGoogle desktop. I also get some feeds in my personal Outlook mailbox. Google is my favorite, since I am almost always logged on to my google account.

Thwarted by Biology

It's a bummer. My knees have been bad. They hurt when I'm just standing around. So, running is going to have to take a back seat to biking... which will be hard, considering that I don't yet have a bike. I guess I'll do pilates, and the photos from that aren't very interesting.

Larabee State Park

It snowed in Bellingham last night. I ran up to Fragrance Lake in Larabee State Park this morning, and when I got to about 500 ft, there was snow on the trees. Nice run, though not as nice in the morning as it is in the late afternoon or evening. The sun hits the west slopes in the afternoon. Last week, I saw a pileated woodpecker on my morning run up this route. What an amazing bird! They're so big, and so striking! He let me hang out and watch him hammer on an old dead tree... I wasn't more than 20 feet away. I followed the re-discovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker a couple years back, and even though this wasn't one of those (seeing as how they only live in the swamps of the southern U.S.) it was evocative of some of the old films of these birds. Really quite beautiful.

I'm buying a digital camera tomorrow (my old one broke!) so I can start posting photos.

Total Run Time: 1 hour
Total Distance: about 4 miles (2 fiercely fighting gravity and 2 controlling the freefall)
Oohs and aahs: 1 for the Sun sparkling on Bellingham Bay off Chuckanut Drive, and 1 for the snow on the cedars and ferns.

Bowman's Bay and Rosario Beach, Anacortes

The beach smelled like oysters yesterday.

I started running at the Rosario Beach parking lot (off highway 20 outside of Anacortes) and circled out onto Rosario Head, a lungbuster with a bit of scrambling up some rocky impromptu trails, and then headed west along the beach and bluffs (on the Bowman Bay/Rosario Beach trail) to Bowman Bay. I then headed south along the beach at Bowman Bay and up another bluff trail, which heads first toward Deception Pass Bridge, and then loops around and heads back toward the beach, the Bowman Bay/Rosario Beach trail, and Rosario. I finished in about 40 minutes, and still had some time left, so I headed up onto Rosario Head again, this time taking some time at the top of the bluff to take in some scenery.

Total run time: 50 minutes
Total Ooohs and Aaahs: at least three or four, all of them having to do with the way the Sound looks from the top of a bluff -- that deep blue-green as you look down into the water... and the smells! Fecundity was the word of the day -- it smelled like LIFE -- plants and mud and the animals of the ocean -- I never complain about the weather when I get to run in a place like this!!!