We've been at the coast since sunday. This has to be some of the most beautiful scenery on earth. The sunsets have been spectactular. The beaches are huge, deep stretches of powdery sand. Today we went back down to Roosevelt beach and it was beautiful. Maybe because it was raining slightly, there wasn't another soul as far as the eye could see. We walked up and down the beach with Odette chasing balls, Lily chasing birds, and Emily and I just enjoying each other. The surf pounded persistently on the sand. On the way back Lily went on and on about her new business venture. She's going to start a dog and cat training school. She's going to have three classes of 10 dogs and three classes of 10 cats for 60 total pets (she did the math herself). She's going to have a party day and a training day and a speed work day. She had a ton of ideas!

We got to Seabrook today. It was a reasonable 3 hour drive - maybe a little less. The worse part is on I-5 through Tacoma. Always busy and often stop and go. We got here a little early so we went two miles down 109 to Roosevelt beach. Lily played in the water and Odette chased balls non-stop.

We came back to the house and changed into more beach friendly clothes. We went back to the same beach and Lily went out in the water and waded and swam in the surf. Emily was never too far away. The water was chilly but not too bad. I stayed with Odette and got her to chase balls into the breakers. The weather was perfect. The temperature was around 65 and the water was probably around 60.

We came back to the house and had dinner. I cooked out steaks and made gin and tonics. After dinner we walked around the grounds and made our way back down to the beach. There is very limited access to the beach from the development so the beach here had even less people on it than the beach two miles down the road. It was a great walk down through second-growth forest on a very nicely maintained, natural path. We then came back via the gazebo and a lighted path back up the hill.

When we got back to the house, Lily and I went into the hot tub for 30 minutes - it was very relaxing. Everyone is about to go to bed.

Odette had awful diarrhea. I am assuming she swallowed too much salt water. I hope she does better in the morning.

We're off to the coast tomorrow. We'll be staying around Moclips, north of Ocean Shores where we went last year. We'll be staying at a planned development called Seabrook. We're kind of curious to see what it's like. It's a little like the development Emily's brother is living in in South Carolina but Seabrook is planned to be on a much bigger scale - on the order of 400 houses. It currently only has 30-40 homes. With all the problems in the credit market it will be curious to see what happens to it over the next couple of years.

Distance: 6.6 miles Start time: 11:30 Duration: 1:11 Pace: 10:50 Weather: Sunny/warm: 75° Feeling(1-10): 7 Average Heartrate: 168 Max Heartrate: 182 Weight: 196 Chances for Marathon: ??? Favorite song: Joni Mitchell - Last Time I Saw Richard

Another day, another long, slow run at Marymoor. All three of us went today. I was slow and winded and hot today. I do not like running in any type of heat.

My favorite song during this run was Last Time I Saw Richard by Joni Mitchell. It came on right after another one of my favorites The River. The imagry and symbolism of a river, is a favorite of mine in song and fiction. Bruce Springsteen has a great double album called The River. In one of my favorite books of all time, Sidhartha, Hesse uses the river to show that the journey is as important as the destination.

But getting back to Last Time I Saw Richard, it starts off with one of my favorite lines of any songs:

Last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68
He told me all romantics meet the same fate
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe

Being a romantic myself, I have alway identified with these lines. In the song, the tables end up being turned on Mitchell. By the end she sings:

Well I'm going to blow this damn candle out
I don't want anyone coming over my table
I got nothing to talk to anyone about

Mitchell starts off calling Richard the romantic but she is the one who ends up sitting at the table. She is the romantic.

So, there's some new evolutionary evidence about the development of the human species - Fossils challenge old evoluton theory. The article states that there has come to light some fossil evidence that different species (homo erectus and homo habilis) in our evolutionary tree may have co-existed in the same area for some signifigant length of time.

I think the headline is inflamatory. It suggests that fossil evidence challenges evolutionary theory. That is not the case. The new evidence sheds new light on how humans have evolved, not on the evolutionary theory as a whole. I hate when the newswires get hold of stories and present them in an oversimplified, misleading way.

The other thing I don't get is that does it really come as a surprise that different species in our evolutionary history co-existed in the same geographic area. That's what people think about the neanderthals and homo sapiens in Europe. What's the big deal? Dogs and wolves have co-existed for years now. Maybe some environmental factors led to a very quick evolutionary change ala the Russian fox guy Dmitri Belyaev.