Courtenay Brown

Notable occurrence of the weekend: I went sailing, and I had fun! Like legitimate fun! Ben and I sailed his boat from where it was docked, in Ballard, under the Fremont Bridge and through Lake Union and past UW and through Portage Bay and up to the top of Lake Washington! It took us about 4 hours, on Saturday evening, and it was really fun. I am not super at sailing, especially compared to Ben’s companions on his two sailing trips last month (one with Bob, Bob, and Robert, obviously on that one I also lose out because my name isn’t Robert or one of its derivatives, and the other with Christine and her mom who is a champion sailor), but I take direction well and I’m awesome at picking out boat snacks. And at taking photos!

Sunset over Lake Washington

Then today I started my new job at Amazon. It was pretty cool. I haven’t actually done any work yet so I don’t know about that part of it yet, BUT the people I met were all very smart and nice, my office location is great (in Chinatown, and we have a Tully’s and a Starbucks right downstairs), and everyone wears jeans. Amazon actually has several office locations in Seattle - there is the main office in the PacMed building on Beacon Hill, and then my office and some other ones. They have free shuttles between the buildings, one of the reasons I didn’t do any work today is I started out at PacMed for orientation, and then shuttled to my building, where, come to find out, they didn’t have my laptop, so I shuttled back to PacMed, but I got on the wrong shuttle and wound up downtown, then found my way onto the right shuttle, then got my laptop, then got on the right shuttle again back to my building. Then my laptop didn’t work. So… Then I trouble shot, then I got it fixed, then it was time to go home!

Tomorrow: no thumb twiddling. I have lots of projects to do and I am looking forward to getting started.

I’m also back on the training wagon now, my week off after Eagleman is officially over. It felt so great to ride my road bike today! I haven’t ridden my Ruby since before I left for Maryland in early May, and I missed it so much. That bike really reminds me why I love cycling - basically just delusions of speed and awesomeness, a 15 lb. bike will do that for you, but I’ll take it . As for my run… I did that this morning at 5:30 and as if the hour weren’t enough of an “ouch”, my legs felt as if I raced yesterday and not last week! It was a bit of a slog for sure, but I’m hoping I’ll feel better soon. And swimming. I went for a swim in Lake Washington this afternoon, which was totally neat until I got 15 minutes out from our house and realized there wasn’t another soul on the lake. No one. The lake is huge and there wasn’t even a water skier or anything. And then I felt something brush my leg, then I remembered that technically Lake Washington is totally connected to the Pacific Ocean where there are sharks, and I turned around and hightailed it back home (and screamed a couple times when phantom jellyfish swiped my hands). So, no more open water swimming without my knight in resplendent neoprene aquajogging armour to come and save me if/when I start to freak out.

My Knight