The End Is Coming!

Well, at least the end of August is coming. Can you believe it!? September is soon to be upon us! I am still working away with the landscaping job and we are wrapping up another big job. I loaded up some road mix and gravel into my pickup this evening and dumped it on the side driveway here at the house. I used the Bobcat to load the pickup, let me tell you, it's a lot easier than shoveling that stuff by hand, which I had to do once I got it home. That took up most of my afternoon and evening, but it was a good way to spend some time outside and make a few improvements.

Over the weekend Laura and I did some geocaching and we easily hit 750! As of tonight we are at 754. Last night we actually went for a 7 mile run to find a cache. It was nice to get out and do some running, but nothing like it used to be in college when I could clip off some 6 minute miles for 10-12 miles. No no, this was more like 8-9 minute mile pace, but it felt like I was running faster than that. Well, I will leave it at that, I will just say I am not in as good of shape as I would like to be, however I have lost about 20 pounds since April and I actually saw the scale stop at 179 pounds on Sunday night!

Sunday, we hiked up onto of Mount Jumbo - the mountain with the L on it if you have been to Missoula before. It was a nice hike to the top, and we were able to get above most of the smoke from the forest fires so the breathing wasn't too bad. Later on Sunday I purchased a new Remington 870 Express Super Magnum shotgun. Remington is offering at $30 rebate on Express shotguns through the end of the year so now was my time to buy. Now Laura and I will be able to shoot at the same time instead of sharing the gun! We also applied for swan tags - in Montana we have a Sandhill Crane and Swan season along with waterfowl. We sent our names in on Saturday for the drawing in a few weeks and we will see if we are lucky enough to get a tag. There are only 500 tags drawn for the Pacific Flyway so we are keeping our fingers crossed. It would be a great hunt if we were able to actually get a tag and then find a swan! ha ha! Swan hunting is foreign territory to me, so it could be a really interesting experience.

I will leave it at that for now. My brain is trying to process about 28 different things right now and I am having trouble keeping my train of thought for my blog posting so if this has been a jumbled mess of gibberish you now have an explaination as to why that is the case... Here's a picture as a consolation prize - it's the windsock on top of the mountain we climbed.My next blog is doing to be dedicated to some friends who have been with me a few years now that have taken quite a few places. It will be a special blog dedicated to them and their companionship. Until again

-=Nolan=-