You want mulch with that?

A scan of this mornings local paper

It's raining again. The story of my summer so far isn't too interesting, but I figured I'd share it because there's not much else on my to-do list today. You see, I've been working at a garden center this year. I work a lot if it's nice out, and the only days off I get are when the weather isn't nice. Luckily for me that's worked out alright lately. When I'm working though, it's tough. I like to think of every day as a new strength workout because with the exception of a few day's here and there of lousy business, I spend 8 hours with either a shovel, axe, mallet, pitchfork, weedwhacker, rake or wheelbarrow in my hands. "Must be the chain gang they got going here" I've heard multiple times from customers. It's about right. It's a funny scene at that place. I don't wear the official Gardenside uniform (a Canadian Tuxedo) like my superiors, but even if I'm not lifting something into a car or shoveling gravel/mulch/compost/topsoil/manure, people still timidly ask "..do you work here?" They can tell from the smell. Thanks to a busted piece-of-crap weedwhacker from 1970-something, the tons of plants everywhere and my own laboring I come home smelling of equal parts sweat, dirt and gasoline. Oh, and then I have to train as well. That's been going along nicely though, and I stop my garden job monday for the less-stressful, less-strenuous job of being a custodian and cleaning swine-flu infected schools for the rest of the summer. I've found a bunch of new roads to rollerski on, and I've been spending a lot of time with my two new summer activities: mountain biking and rollerskiing up the Bolton access road. I'm not that good at mountain biking, but It's fun as hell. And skiing up Bolton is fun too, for someone like me. I also installed a pullup bar on the door to my basement/apartment (my parents want me living as far from them as possible). There's a 7-pullup toll (and increasing) now to go downstairs now. No excuses. Wake up and go upstairs to pee at 3am? My conscience won't let me through. Gotta pay the toll before going back down to bed, you lazy sack of crap! When it comes to pullups I'll steal a line Usain Bolt told Sports Illustrated. Simply put, "expect big things from me this year". I've been building up training nicely, stretching my arms out in the dugout this spring as opposed to last year when I was throwing fastballs nonstop and needed some serious relief by the time the 4th inning came around. Summer is in full stride though, so there's no excuses for not being much faster this year. I've been putting in my work. That's about it for me. I've accomplished most of my goals for the day: eat 9 chocolate chip pancakes, finish my book, and I think that's about it it aside from a short run and a core workout when I feel like moving.


Pete Hegman, John Dixon, Jared Supple and I on top of Camels Hump last week