Alright, I did it–the weather was simply too good not too–I went for my first outside run in years. It wasn’t easy. One, I’ve never done particularly well in warmer temperatures. Indeed, my ideal temperature range is from 72 to 80 degrees: outside of that I’ve gotta dress up and hunker down or dress down and hunker–well, down. Second, at nearly fifty–and with a fair amount of “post” Lyme body damage–my lungs, heart, and muscles, just aren’t what they used to be. Thirdly, I’ve, for some reason, become particularly self-conscious about my body, my hair length and facial hair, and my arguably unstylish jogging costume. Finally, for some reason it’s easier for me to do a thirty minute walk-jog-run on a treadmill where I’m glancing at the clock and my calerie burning count from time to time than it is for me to run outside in what’s ultimately a circle leading ultimately back to my front door. It’s conceptually odd. In one case I drive to the gym, get on the treadmill, go for awhile, get off, and drive home, making one circle, and in the other scenario I’m outside running in what amounts to a larger circle. I think it has to do with both an aspect of my autism and how it integrates with the varying degrees of PTS I carry on my shoulders: on a treadmill I can stop at any time and get the fuck out of there. On a jog through the neighboring park at any moment I’m, well, stuck so many steps from home and have to back track so many steps to get back to whatever my mid and lower brains has decided is “safety”. This likewise implies that if I want to and feel able to push myself further at the gym the distance to safety is exactly the same while it ends up being double the steps on the literal trail. I’m not sure when my anxiety for being away from my home base started, but I’m sure it was somewhere around when I was six or seven, only to be turned into a lifetime of anxiety the day I ran away from home with little but my parent’s beat up 1980’s Volvo GL stationwagon and the clothes on my back. Oh, and the Oy vey thing? It’s this darned global warming. My home–while I’m daily thankful for having a roof over my head–doesn’t have the best insulation in the walls, so while I have recently replaced all the windows as well as the roof and have a relatively new Air Conditioning unit, once the outdoor temperature exceeds 98 or so F the walls start to get warm to the touch; the AC simply can’t keep up. So no, not looking forward to this summer and yes, looking into solar so to prevent the electric bills from going through the roof (or having to rely on the grid if/when it gets overloaded during the worst summer days). Yeah, not looking forward to the June/July/August hell that’s become Oregon summers. That’ll have to do it for my first blog in awhile. Forgive any spelling and formatting errors as I’m still working out some things when writing entries from my Ubuntu Server laptop. Cheers, .asm.