the owl and the olive tree

Today jmpava and I walked the 5K portion of the Long Beach marathon. It went pretty well -- faster and easier than I expected. (My time is sucktastic, however, since we got detoured by roadwork on the way in and hit the start line 15 minutes after official start.) The only hitch in the plan was that I was wearing shoes that didn't quite agree with my feet, which became painful after a while. (Just a smidgeon too short for my toes, which meant that either my toes were jammed painfully in, or my foot was reflexively curling up to protect my toes and therefore straining the instep.) But generally speaking the walk went well, and it felt fabulous to be out and moving around. Must do that more often. I don't know why I don't; there's a lovely beach spitting distance from jmpava's apartment. Must take more advantage of it for walks and so on. It'd probably be good for my energy levels and general stress management as well as being good for me physically.

Participation in the marathon (or, well, 5K) also conferred free admission to the Long Beach Aquarium, so after wolfing down lunch, we headed over there. Caveat: I am a sucker for animals. This mens that I am disproportionately fond of zoos, aquariums, animal parks, et cetera. So I got a big kick out of it. Highlights were the luminous, translucent and almost alien-looking array of jellyfish, the pet-a-shark display (I touched a ray, a sand tiger shark, and a strange critter that looked surprisingly like a trilobite -- rays are shockingly soft and silky to the touch), the larger shark display (huuuuuge numbers of teeth; somehow, I didn't expect to see the teeth), and the otters, which are so cute they almost cause spontaneous cuteness combustion. The sea dragons and gigantic groupers were also pretty damn cool.

Then I watched Princess Mononoke and pretty much crashed. Tired. But: good day.